Magnet Ban Cleared
zenmagnets.com
zenmagnets.com
It seems normal to pursue something that could result in economic benefit, if you have the means to do so. And if there's a larger principle at stake, all the more reason.
Someone who believes that narrative would have expected this guy to lose, pay six figures in legal fees, have a mental breakdown, and the judgement to only come in five years after his magnet company closed down because they couldn't sell their only product.
Personally I don't have enough experience to know whether the US legal system really works that way.
That sounds like an easily made, hard to back up claim.
http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...
"The Costs and Benefits of Regulation: Review and Synthesis" RW Hahn, Yale Journal of Regulation, Volume 8, Issue 1, Article 9, 1991
The above link was the first Google result for (economy-wide costs of regulations journal) for me, and Google notes that it is cited by hundreds of other articles. The first 10 results all seemed to similarly explain that regulations are costly.
>Having a cost and having a "large, economy-wide negative impact" are very different things.
Is a large cost not a large negative impact? Are regulations by the federal government not economy-wide? Are you making any discernible point that couldn't have been expressed by "NUH UH, I'M STILL RIGHT LALALALA!"?
To pick a random example: The article doesn't say it costs shoppers in Des Moines $4,029 per year due to milk-market regulations. It costs US citizens somewhere between $500 million and $2.1 billion per year - in 1991.
The journal article I linked is literally about the large, economy-wide costs of regulations. Your response is a non-sequitor.
Going with your random example plucked from the article... [Milk market regulations] cost US citizens somewhere between $500 million and $2.1 billion per year - in 1991.
Besides the wild variation, so what? That number is meaningless without the context of the size of the milk market as a whole which would allow us to assess the scope of the burden, not to mention some estimate of the likely economic cost of an unregulated milk marketplace (eg economic losses due to illness from disease).
Why do you think it's impressive to pull out a big number like this without any context? It's ridiculous. If we're going to go with cherry-picking argument of this type, I can't help noticing that Americans love milk and almost every American refrigerator I'e ever seen has an open container of milk. So since we're talking about the US as a whole in your example, and there were ~250m Americans in 1991, it seems like these regulations imposed a cost of between $2 and $8 that year on every American...which doesn't sound like all that much to pay for a year of knowing the milk you enjoy is safe to consume. MY household spends about $7-800 a year on dairy products, so back in 1991, and adjusting very generously for inflation, we might have spent $200 to consume the same amount of milk. Using the worst-case number from your paper, positing an upper regulatory burden for every American of $8 and doubling it to represent the two people in my household, maybe $16 of that $200 consisted of regulatory costs. So the worst-case scenario is that regulation drove up the cost of milk by 8%, which doesn't sound like that bad of a trade.
Since I've done all the work here so far perhaps you'd like to estimate the benefits of reliably safe milk in terms of avoided medical costs from dairy-borne pathogens.
Because you replied with a link to something that did not further the point under discussion.
>Is a large cost not a large negative impact?
No, it is not.
>The journal article I linked is literally about the large, economy-wide costs of regulations.
And it appears to mostly disagree with the point you are trying to make.
The difference is pretty basic: Having a "negative impact" requires value-judgement, having a cost does not. In terms of economics it requires a broad view of the entire economy, whereas a cost can be directly assigned to a single event or series of events.
Saying that a regulation has a cost is saying that it requires some expenditure to implement/maintain. Saying it has a negative impact is saying that the expenditure to implement/maintain that regulation outweighs the as-yet-in-this-discussion undefined benefits of the regulation in question.
Well of course, but the comment I responded to questioned the assertion that there is a large, economy-wide cost.
Is the benefit of (cleaner air/safer highways/magnet-free-toys) worth the cost? That's what the debate ought to be about. But first we all have to agree that there is a cost being paid.
No, I did not. The comment I replied to implied a net-negative cost.
When regulation is used to protect people from being taken advantage of, then the benefits are well worth the cost.
These are barriers to trade. And we got to this place with death by a thousand regulation cuts. Can't do this. Can't do that. Cant do this on that day while doing that instead of this, without willing out volumes of forms. And you wonder why compliance costs are stupid high?
(Don't get me wrong, I hold to a mixture of communism and capitalism - I think something like GNU can be done for nearly everything, but there's room for making money as well. I just categorically disagree with the volume of regulations. It makes people criminals via incapability of understanding the law.)
Personally I'm already there with lots of stuff. I'm aware that it's letting certain companies collect rents, but it's generally not worth my time and the extra risk to track down another brand that might be acceptably reliable and safe, assuming they haven't decided to burn whatever little reputation they've built up for some short-term profit by swapping their once-decent product for crap while keeping the price and model info the same after all the reviews I read were written.
That's also a barrier to entry. Economies are tricky things :-/
But, seriously: This nightmare is one of the stories we tell each other. But, for most companies, it's just not true.
I've started four or five companies. Mostly software, one that sells actual (government-certified organic) food, one that mostly worked for governments (including the defense sector). In all that time, I've never felt like regulation prevented me from doing anything. Once or twice, I had to submit some form that I thought was overkill. But in fact I doubt there was ever a year where I spend more than two or three days net on government bureaucracy.
I know that the situation may be different for construction or airplane startups (at least I hope it is). But this sort of hyperbole is just a lie that doesn't improve by repetition.
If anything, I've been surprised by how little regulation there sometimes is. Look at AirBnB or Uber or drones: Who would've though that you could (for a time) fly a model airplane in Heathrow's final approach corridor and only get a "we're looking into it and engaging in a dialog with all interested parties" as a reply?
The CPSC and related regulators CAN regulate dangerous stuff without making idiotic wars on toy magnets that undermine their entire existence. Seriously. They can fulfill their entire function, standards of error for mistakes included, without EVER committing such heinously overregulatory acts as this - in fact, it's important to their continued existence that they DO NOT overregulate this badly (because when they do, their opponents gain substantial ammunition to eventually disband/defang them).
However, it's false to say that EVERY individual regulation meets these criteria. As TFA pointed out, these objects are far less hazardous than firearms, fireworks, automobiles, and even balloons (the leading cause of child suffocation, and for whic labeling is required), but because they are novel the CPSC decided to slap them with an absolute ban, which is stronger regulation than any of the other products listed above and thousands of others.
This was a very badly considered and executed regulation, and the judge acted rightly. FWIW, I don't think anyone is saying what you imply, that all regulations are baseless and bad.
Yes, they're dangerous is you don't follow safety precautions and I would never allow children to play with them. When children visit we make sure the magnets are not accessible - it's our responsibility to think about others' safety. But it's not the responsibility of the magnet manufacturers, as long as they make it clear that their product can be dangerous (and the vendors I've bought from certainly do). The mere fact that something is dangerous is not grounds for taking it off sale, otherwise we should shut down every gas station and hardware store right now.
Why make a distinction between things that are dangerous on accident (defective) vs things that are dangerous by design?
>otherwise we should shut down every gas station and hardware store right now.
Every law or regulation needs to balance the risk to society against the benefit to society. This is a toy.
This comment is one example of how hard the labelling failed. Buckyballs came with a big label saying "BUCKYBALLS ARE NOT TOYS".
Because many dangerous things have significant utility. Fire is useful for warming your home and cooking food but can also injure or even kill. Water is essential life but you could suffer from hypothermia or drown. These are things that should be obvious to all adults and most children. If you need to have it spelled out to you then your opinions on the economics of safety are not worth very much.
Every law or regulation needs to balance the risk to society against the benefit to society. This is a toy.
It's not a toy just because you say it is, nor are all toys required to be equally safe or not admit any possibility of injury. Really, it's sad that you think such an assertion constitutes a valid argument.
Maybe you think it's 'just a toy' because you can't conceive of any use for it other than mere amusement. That's your problem, not mine.
Its reasonable to observe social norms, comment on risk vs reward, and suggest different views. Others should not be subject to ridicule and hostile comments for this.
I suggest you take your toy and go home.
Yes, it certainly makes sense to distinguish based on utility, which was the whole point of the second part of my comment, and is why a comparison to gas stations and hardware stores is invalid. Utility is completely orthogonal to "defect vs design".
> It's not a toy just because you say it is
It's a toy because it fits the definition of the word, regardless of how they market it. If it has some purpose other than entertainment, I would love to understand what it is. From my viewpoint, the utility, and therefore the harm caused to society by it being banned, is low. Note how this is different for gasoline and power tools.
What exactly did I say that made it sound like that?
A kid eats a magnet waits a while then eats another one. The magnets are strong enough to find each other through the intestinal walls. The result is pretty horrifying, so be careful with strong magnetic toys.
The magnet companies sold these items as a toy to children and resisted efforts to put warnings on them and resisted efforts to stop them being sold to children.
If we can't sell things to adults because they're dangerous to children, we might as well close... well, all hardware stores.
My nephews don't think tools or random bits of hardware are uninteresting. I certainly didn't either. If you're of a mind to play, the world is nothing but toys.
The regulator's point about the magnets is that the manufacturers didn't manage to stop them being sold in toy shops to children, and that even with the warnings parents were giving them to children as toys.
And, even compared to random bits of hardware store: if you swallow a nail you're probably going to be ok. If you swallow magnets you're probably going to need medical help.
As long as you're okay with sepsis from a perforated intestine, then sure.
If a child swallows anything larger than a dime, the standard recommendation is to seek medical attention.
Most small boys (and some girls) are fascinated by tools, that's why there are play tools in toy stores so kids can pretend to be a construction worker or suchlike. Conversely I enjoy playing with magnets but I also find them useful for visualizing complex problems and as artistic tools for texturing paint.
Maybe you didn't find physical tools interesting as a child but it's fallacious to assume that no other children do when there's abundant evidence to the contrary.
The first warning label on Buckyballs said 13+. Anyone under 18 is a child.
The facts fall staunchly in opposition to your comments suggesting that they were resistant to applying warning labels, and actively trying to market them to children. This is why all of your comments stating such are downvoted into the grey. One of your other comments claims all the CPSC wanted was warnings, but the reality is that the CPSC worked to drive these companies out of business after all of the warnings were present.
That's categorically false.
No it's not. This submission is about one company resisting the regulatory action created when buckyballs continued to sell the product to 14 year olds, even though they knew teenagers were among the > 1000 children hospitalised by these magnets.
Are you really trying to argue that a 14 year old is so overcome by the overwhelming desire to experience magnetic forces that s/he is unable to read a warning label, and the only sensible course of action is to halt all sales of the product? Come off it.
The warnings you talk about on buckyballs did not say "adults only", they said "13+".
It is dishonest to suggest that buckyballs didn't sell to children and to say that buckyballs included warnings about not selling to children when the warnings said 13+.
> Are you really trying to argue that a 14 year old is so overcome by the overwhelming desire to experience magnetic forces that s/he is unable to read a warning label
That's what happened, yes. Children are by definition fucking idiots. That's why we don't let them drive; drink alcohol; vote; run for office; enter into contracts; join the military; live by themselves; get married; have sex; etc.
>, and the only sensible course of action is to halt all sales of the product? Come off it.
I'm saying we tried warning labels. Parents and children and toy stores ignored those warnings, and children ended up hospitalised as a result. The manufacturers resisted attempts to strengthen the warnings; regulators were forced into issuing a ban because soft-touch regulation failed.
The manufacturers brought this upon themselves by not controlling their supply chain properly and by resisting better clearer warnings.
If you are telling me that a 13 year old can't comprehend a clearly written warning then I call bullshit. If parents and children and toy stores ignore the warnings then the responsibility lies with them, not the manufacturers. I am not willing to live in a society where everything has to be dumbed down to the level of safety for a small child.
The manufacturers brought this upon themselves by not controlling their supply chain properly and by resisting better clearer warnings.
What does the supply chain have to do with consumer behavior? Total bullshit. Why don't you think that parents, toy stores and older children are immune from responsibility when they are given clear warnings of the danger? I take responsibility for myself and any kids that are temporarily in my care, so you should you and so should everyone else.
You're literally arguing that adults should be able to have nice things because some people are too fucking stupid to follow directions. No. Once they've been properly informed and still choose to do stupid shit, it's their responsibility, not mine or yours. Why are you arguing so intently for treating everyone like children just because some adults refuse to accept responsibility?
I am not sure where you got the idea that the companies were trying to sell these thing to children. They never attempted to do that, and if they had they would be liable for millions in damages. They did everything they could to save their business and cooperated with the CPSC in every possible way.
Disclaimer: I am not directly involved with these companies but I am a freelancer who built and ran the Buckyballs website for almost four years.
And if your child (Lets say over the age of 3) is still eating random non-food items without checking with you, then you're not doing a great parenting job.
Don't you think the whole "put a warning sticker on everything" is getting a bit ridiculous?
If you spend a little bit of time thinking about how strong magnets can probably attract each other through internal tissue, the risk makes sense, but it doesn't seem like something that's obvious, at least not to me.
This is one circumstance where awareness/warning labels are really useful, but unfortunately we hear so many frivolous warnings people are not likely to take them seriously. Everyone should know that these contraptions were literally banned at one point for the risk they pose to children, and the disclaimers encountered are not just generic CYA, but representative of a real risk to small children that has a real body count.
Like the GP, I'm glad that these are legal in the United States again, but we should not take the issue of informing parents of the risk involved with these toy-like objects lightly.
A similar issue is being posed by the small watch batteries included in many children's toys and remote controls these days. Children swallow these and they burn holes in their organs that result in serious disabilities. It's important that parents be aware of such non-obvious environmental dangers.
I don't think non-clever parents ought to be punished via their children. That seems a little Old Testament biblical.
> Don't you think the whole "put a warning sticker on everything" is getting a bit ridiculous?
That's pretty good late 90's standup material, but I'm not sure if it's factually supported. Are there too many stickers? Are they effective or not effective at preventing harm? Do they incur more costs than the harm they prevent?
So yes, I think we've gone too far.
I argue that there are too many stickers, that they become less effective through profusion, and that in some cases the cost does exceed the benefit. For example, in California a 1986 ballot initiative called Proposition 65 mandates that businesses put up a sign on any building that contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer. Unfortunately this definition is very vague, since many common chemicals can be carcinogenic in sufficient quantities. As a result, virtually every business in California displays a sign warning that the building contains cancer-causing chemicals, completely obviating the utility of warning the public about hazards because it's impossible to distinguish what the actual level of risk is. There doesn't seem to be any evidence of the signage provision actually helping in any way, but it's been a goldmine for signmakers and attorneys who file nuisance lawsuits over the non-display of these useless signs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_65_(198...
Note that I'm not arguing against regulation here, I'm arguing against ineffectual regulation whose discernable costs exceed the discernable benefit.
That's just plain ridiculous. No amount or quality of parenting will prevent a child from occasionally doing something stupid, any more than it will prevent an adult from the same.
Please stop offering false dichotomies like 'status quo (even when it's failing) or no regulation at all.'
as opposed to your slippery-slope "where does it end?" argument?
Unless you think that there should be no regulations at all, you agree that there is some line before which there should be regulations and after it there shouldn't, so "where does it end" is an actual discussion to have, not a non-sequitor to end the conversation like you're using it.
It was not a non-sequitur at all. I want an answer.
Meantime, since we are already having that debate, I am asking you, personally, to go on the record on where you as an individual think that line of demarcation should be. I am all for safety labeling (up to the point where there are so many safety warnings that their effectiveness drops) but I am also all for people being able to buy potentially dangerous products that can be used safely by following instructions and the use of the senses by a person of ordinary adult competence.
In other words, if a supermajority of adults selected via a statistically valid sampling method were to examine a commercial product and correctly infer what degree of danger it might present (based on the packaging, direct observation of the product, and general knowledge) then that's Good Enough.
I don't think that we need to build all our theories of product safety and liability around the least competent people in our society. That imposes a large opportunity cost on people who do take their responsibilities seriously but whose liberty is curtailed in the name of safeguarding people who can't or won't take responsibility.
These magnets hospitalised over a thousand children, and killed at least one.
How many children are hospitalized/die from swallowing coins or lego?
Do we need warning labels on coins?
How many kids are hospitalized/die from swallowing batteries? I'd bet it's a lot more than magnets, and batteries can be pretty lethal.
For button batteries:
poison.org[1] lists 54 fatalities since 1977; the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia has a page [2] that mentions "Fifteen children have died — 11 of them within the last six years" but it isn't clear when exactly that page was published.
[1]http://www.poison.org/battery/fatalcases
[2] http://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/kohls-injury-prevention...
However that doesn't help us much. Strong magnets are far more prevalent now and the specific toys that caused most injuries weren't around in the UK, I think (?), back then.
Moreover, that probably makes magnet injuries per item in the home massively outweigh coin injuries.
I looked for EU IDB stats too but didn't get anywhere, my starting source was http://www.rospa.com/resources/statistics/ which lists some other potential data sources at the bottom.
Of course you can't prevent every idiot from doing something stupid. But some things are dangerous in an non-obvious way. It's pretty obvious you can choke on small objects. It's not obvious that eating one small magnet is fine, but eating a second one after a while can kill you.
This was the first court case CPSC took in 13 years to force a recall. That doesn't sound like an out of control regulator.
Regulators & regulations aren't an unmitigated good. They can be better than their lack, or they can be worse.
Magnet companies are more likely to care about their customers than government caring about my child.
> We don't sell fireworks nor guns to children.
UK is not a good example because they dont even sell hardware tools to kids. That is simply wussyfication of the society.
...mostly by regulation, right?
I mean – we can all hope that all parent read about all accidents that kill people and then independently come to the smart conclusion, including a level-headed appreciation of the risk, normalized within the background context and the market penetration of ultra-strong magnets...
or – better idea – let's put some smart people in a room and let them make a recommendation.
There's even a staunchly capitalistic argument for regulation: it's the only reason we trust food from a supermarket we've never visited before, or a new toy, or an online bank, or a really fast looking electric car from California made by this guy who mostly deals in explosions controlled by 400,000 mechanical parts all supplied by the lowest bidder.
In other words: Regulation creates the trust that's essential for any economic activity.
Mostly by bad reviews, lawsuites and bad PR. One good example of this is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide
While everyone thinks that it was an evil pharma that should have stopped by regulators it appears that the pharma company lost billions but saved by regulators instead.
>we can all hope that all parent read about all accidents that kill people and then independently come to the smart conclusion
Neither parent not bureaucrats can do that 100% correctly. Parents can do it infinitely better that the people in washington. Babies will die no matter what.
> let's put some smart people in a room and let them make a recommendation.
Like smart people deciding on housing loans, student loans, cheaper healthcare, invasion of Iraq ? It eventually snowballs into a giant problem that makes the original problem far less worse.
Smart people do not possess the intelligence or information to make decisions for others.
To quite the Wikipedia article you linked:
For correctly denying the application despite the
pressure from Richardson-Merrell, Kelsey eventually
received the President's Award for Distinguished
Federal Civilian Service at a 1962 ceremony with
President John F. Kennedy. In September 2010, the
FDA honored Kelsey with the first Kelsey award.
The award, given annually to an FDA staff member,
came 50 years after Kelsey, then a new medical
officer at the agency, first reviewed the application
from the William S. Merrell Company of Cincinnati.[109]
Cardiologist Helen B. Taussig learned of the damaging
effects of the drug thalidomide on newborns and in 1967,
testified before Congress on this matter after a trip to
Germany where she worked with infants with
phocomelia (severe limb deformities).
As a result of her efforts, thalidomide was banned
in the United States and Europe.
Meanwhile, in places where the market was regulating itself:
Throughout the world, about 10,000 cases were
reported of infants with phocomelia due to
thalidomide; only 50% of the 10,000 survived.FDA saved people from Thalidomide ? What about over 100K people who lost their life because FDA delayed approval of Provenge and many other life saving drugs ? What about the near monopoly that FDA has granted to EpiPens ? What about millions of Americans who can afford basic healthcare because of FDA's compliance costs and die as a result ?
Just for sample check this : http://www.lifeextension.com/magazine/2010/11/FDA-Delay-of-O...
FDA or market based regulation totally depends on the outcomes and at least for me it is very apparent that market is extremely good at figuring out what works and what not than FDA. Also at significantly lower costs.
>Throughout the world, about 10,000 cases were reported of infants with phocomelia due to thalidomide; only 50% of the 10,000 survived.
It is actually a very good example of how quickly market can detect signals and respond to it. FDA in this case is purely awarded for being slow. FDA has a very poor history of preventing harmful drugs one has to only look at the list of lawsuites after which the drugs ere taken back from market.
At the moment that seems completely false to me. I don't remember a single time I took any government regulation seriously. For example I take my mechanic's advice about car safety far more seriously than government reports and ratings.
I trust Yelp lot more to chose a doctor for my kid than any government report. Honestly, I dont even care if the doctor actually had a medical degree or not if the yelp reviews and my peer's reviews about that doctor are good enough.
Regulator's role in deceiving public on important issues on the contrary makes me fare more skeptical. Regulator's stand on marijuana, vaping, sugar, fat, mother's milk, ethanol in gas and many others things is often false.
Why? Your mechanic might have useful insight into the reliability of cars but would have little more visibility into the safety of cars than the average person.
> Honestly, I dont even care if the doctor actually had a medical degree or not if the yelp reviews and my peer's reviews about that doctor are good enough.
I hope your kid is a rhetorical device and not an actual child.
On the contrary he knows more people in real accidents unlike the regulators and sees on regular basis which car did better and worse. He has a clear skin in the game to offer me reliable advice.
> I hope your kid is a rhetorical device and not an actual child.
It is a rhetorical device but I hardly doubt people demand to see their pediatrician's degree certificate.
Most people don't demand to see the pediatrician's degree and certifications because the government regulates the industry.
> Most people don't demand to see the pediatrician's degree and certifications because the government regulates the industry.
People refer to yelp, friends and other known patients before visiting a doctor. Or they rely on a reputable brand of the hospital which has all the incentive to employ good doctors. Government regulation or not people do not rely on mere certificate the doctor has and instead rely on other much more collaborative system to figure out who is a good doctor.
In the absence of government's heavy handed approach of medical regulation the market can perhaps develop a FICO like score for doctors.
Daily life must be fascinating. All these miracles – wireless phones, glowing globes, flying(like off the ground!). Experts are completely useless, so these things must be spiritual creatures, created for the pleasure of "street-smart" people.
I wish there were a way for such people to actually opt out the system they reject.
Not one of that invention you list is made by experts working to help people. On the contrary they are a result of spontaneous order created by people pursuing self interest.
It's healthy to be skeptical of the government. It's not healthy to always assume malice, because it makes you so biased that you do things like assume your mechanic knows more about the safety of cars than the people whose only job is to determine the safety of cars.
Your mechanic has zero skin in the car safety game. He has nothing to gain or lose from giving accurate safety advice. This means he's not financially incentivized to push certain cars but also means he's not incentivized to gather or provide accurate or useful data.
I'm amazed that you're so distrustful of the government that you prefer tarot reading from your mechanic over the recommendations from the agency that literally crashes thousands of cars to gather data on how safe they are. This isn't healthy skepticism. This is blind hate.
> People refer to yelp, friends and other known patients before visiting a doctor.
People generally have no way of knowing the quality of a doctor. They recommend primarily based on whether they like the doctor on a personal level. Which is fine because the medical industry is structured to largely keep incompetent doctors out.
> In the absence of government's heavy handed approach of medical regulation the market can perhaps develop a FICO like score for doctors.
I'm just kind of at a loss here. FICO was such a screwed up system that the government had to step in and regulate it because people were unable to get loans because of bad data and they had no way to find out or fix it. This is hardly a good model for controlling quality in general.
When industries form bodies to self-regulate in the absence of government involvement, it generally doesn't help consumers. It helps the industry. It's also typically called collusion because it's such a harmful practice.
Well then you're just a foolish person. The absurdity of some regulations doesn't mean that all regulations are absurd - that's a simple fallacy of composition.
I dont even care if the doctor actually had a medical degree or not if the yelp reviews and my peer's reviews about that doctor are good enough.
Yeah sure buddy. Come over next time you have a bad pain and I'll operate for cheap. I have a really high karma score so you know I'm legit.
Profitability does not automatically imply liability...unless you want all manufacturers to carry total liability insurance for every product they sell and for every product to become significantly more expensive as a result.
This is just not true. I bought a lot of Buckyballs (a brand of magnet) before they were taken off sale and they had very clear and prominent warnings on them which I read and took seriously because I am an adult. Neither I nor the manufacturer are responsible for people who won't do that.
Now maybe you can cite a manufacturer in the UK who showed disregard for such regulation, but we're talking about a regulatory body in the US which insisted on taking products off sale even though the manufacturers were fully compliant with the regulatory demands. Please stick within the factual context.
Also, there are no warning labels on balloons, much less are they banned, but, as the OP points out, balloons are the #1 cause of child suffocation. It's clear here that these rules aren't being made based on any sensible cost-benefit regulatory consideration, they are just putting unnecessary burdens on new products and grandfathering in the old ones because this is the path of least blame/resistance.
For instance, the first result for "balloons" on amazon doesn't show any warning labels on the exterior package or the front of the interior bag.
https://smile.amazon.com/Kings-Deal-10color-Latex-Balloons/d...
(Maybe it's in small type on the back?)
EDIT: Was able to find this PDF, which says that latex balloons must be labeled if they are intended for children under 12. But presumably nothing is required if intended for adults. http://mohawkglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/labeling-...
I don't think it is sensible for government machinery to waste taxpayer money on inventing new ways of saving babies and instead let parents make those decisions. Parents care for their babies infinitely more than government and those parents who might be irresponsible might put children in harms way despite all regulations.
A good clear label indicating the harm is good enough.
Perfect accidentally correct typo. You meant "NOT going to", but your intent was wrong:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/05/01/toddl...
Or, according to the website, "a balloon, the #1 cause of child suffocation, a novelty everyone grew up with and often believe to be harmless."
Those examples are obviously dangerous while magnets are not. A parent is [not] going to leave their 2 year old playing with a loaded gun [...]
I amended your quote as you seem to have omitted a word by mistake. However, I have to disagree - lots of small children die or shoot others every year because the parents do allow them to play with a loaded gun. Sure they don't hand them a gun and say 'have fun Timmy,' but it's quite common for people to leave the gun accessible to children who then play with it. I don't recall how many kids die this way each year but it's far from zero. Given the wide popularity of guns, I'd think a lot more 2 year olds get shot than die or suffer injury from eating magnets.
http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/child-injured-kill... has pretty up-to-date raw data for anyone interested in analyzing this.
I've seen the "do not swallow warnings" but I don't recall ever getting much of an explanation.
I think explanations of warnings are severely under rated. It's the difference between a warning someone might actually heed and one someone might easily dismiss as nannying.
>they don't hand them a gun and say 'have fun Timmy,'
That is the distinction. These things are marketed as toys. The expectation is that they will be played with and probably by kids.
Regarding the warnings, almost every kids toy has these type of warnings. It is easy to get desensitized to them. A parent should still be aware of them, but it also means that in practice these type of warnings might not be enough to stop potential problems.
And for the record, I'm not saying these should be outlawed or anything. Just that the comparison to guns and fireworks or using those as a justification for a lack of regulation is silly due to the marketing and perceived danger of all three products.
I agree and think it's a mistake to put on so many warnings that tired parents, or stupid parents, or parents who can't read English well, or whoever, become so overwhelmed by the warning information that they just ignore it. But it's also a mistake to say 'well people don't pay attention to warnings so we'd better just take the product off the market.' That's just an absurd over-reaction.
'You can have fun with this' =/= 'Safe for kids to use unsupervised.' Or more bluntly 'fun' =/= 'carefree.' Lots of enjoyable things are also dangerous. At some point liability accrues to the person who willingly engages in the dangerous activity; manufacturers should clearly inform consumers about the existence of risk but should not be expected to actively insulate them from it under every circumstance.
And for the record, I'm not saying these should be outlawed or anything. Just that the comparison to guns and fireworks or using those as a justification for a lack of regulation is silly due to the marketing and perceived danger of all three products.
I don't think so. Guns and fireworks are often marketed irresponsibly from what I've seen, and while responsibility is a matter of opinion it's easy to find advertising materials suggesting that guns and fireworks can be employed for fun, so I hope you'd agree that that's a fact. It's definitely a fact that while in pursuit of said fun, people do stupid shit with guns and fireworks on a regular basis - every year a few people kill them,selves on the 4th of July doing some idiotic firework stunt, and the toll from gun accidents is higher again.
So look, while I agree that magnets are not as obviously dangerous as guns or fireworks in that they don't involve explosions, they're still dangerous and anyone over the age of about 12 who doesn't appreciate this is rather ignorant. When the magnets are sold with a large warning saying 'this is dangerous because you could die' and people choose to ignore than, then they're being willfully ignorant.
I don't understand the compulsion to make excuses for willful ignorance. Most households have several dangerous chemicals in a cupboard under the kitchen sink and it's well understood that you shouldn't let kids drink drain cleaner etc. etc. Why are parents expected to exercise reasonable judgement where firearms, incendiaries, chemicals and so on are concerned but the same level of warning isn't considered sufficient for some other products? It's a self-defeating position.
In America, you're not expected or even allowed to be completely responsible for your child's safety. You're told what to do and what not to do (no matter your own educated experience)... the state knows best, don't you know?
More and more, every time I hear the word 'simple' it's followed by some irrational bullshit. It's becoming my least favorite word.
The most accurate number I've found (compiled by the Associated Press) gives around 100 deaths per year from firearm negligence involving children.
That's 100 too many, but to put it in perspective, 70 children per year choke to death on small objects (like balloons or dice), and right around 700 per year drown in swimming pools.
The most important part to solving this problem is education.
There are far too many children that don't know that guns aren't toys, and that grow up never learning anything about gun safety, which isn't exactly the best way to encourage a culture of responsibility as adults.
We know that teaching teenagers about safe sex drastically lowers STD and unplanned pregnancy rates, and we should be doing the same thing with gun safety education.
Parents can be quite ignorant of this. I had a broken appendix as kid, and was already drifting out of the world, when my parents finally decided to get a doctor. Interior wounds are not visible until it is over.
Still magnets are awesome.
But no doctor would order an MRI first, physical examination then one or two X rays first would be standard.
When you buy an item marketed and sold as a toy you have a reasonable expectation that it's not going to cause the death of your child.
All toys are not appropriate for all children. I wouldn't give my daughter magnets to play with. I also wouldn't give her silly putty or dice or a chemistry set. She's too young. Eventually she can have all these things and a gallon of bleach under her bathroom sink. But not for quite a while.
These magnet companies knew that teenagers were using the magnets for fake piercing jewellery. They knew there was a risk that young people were eating the jewellery, and they resisted putting warnings on the packs and resisted moving the product off toy shelves.
But choking on a wad of silly putty definitely can. Hence the fact that it's labeled as a choking hazard and not for young children.
I don't think the bar for "should be banned" is "small amounts are dangerous". A "small amount" of Scrabble can kill your kid, despite there being "no reason" to eat Scrabble tiles, but we don't ban it. Toy stores sell balloons and jacks and dice and all kinds of things that pose real dangers to kids.
> These magnet companies knew that teenagers were using the magnets for fake piercing jewellery.
Shrug? Car manufacturers know teens are racing cars and snowboard manufacturers know teens are riding down black diamonds with little skill and no helmets. Teens do stupid things and we don't ban entire categories of product to attempt to protect them from minor dangers.
> * they resisted putting warnings on the packs and resisted moving the product off toy shelves.*
Did they actually resist labeling them or just resist the ban? If they resisted labeling, that's pointless and dumb and it's perfectly reasonable that they be required to label clearly and appropriately.
Did quite a lot of people ignore the warnings? Yes? Is that the manufacturer's fault? No, it's the fault of the people who saw a warning and didn't bother to read it or take it seriously. No doubt they are some very unhappy people because their kids ended up in hospital, but their opinions are worthless because they had the safety information and put their children at risk because they chose to ignore it.
That's not the manufacturers' fault.
Most of us trust that toys for kids will be essentially harmless. We choose to live in a trusting society, yes. That doesn't make us guilty of anything.
This is such a subtle risk, its arguable that a printed warning on a paper container is insufficient. What happens when the packaging is discarded? Another kid enters the house? Your kid gives the toy away?
Speak for yourself - you don't speak for everyone else and I see no reason to use your standard as the default.
I have no such trust because I have always looked at safety warnings and taken them at face value. I always loved playing with Lego, but I was also aware that Lego bricks have sharp edges and are a choking hazard for small children. I knew this when I was a kid too.
Finally, I see no reason for you to lump these magnets in with all other 'toys for kids'. The buckyball magnets came with a very clear warning that they were for people 13 and over, and that you could get injured or even die by swallowing the magnets. When an item comes with a clear and unambiguous written warning of specific dangers and your idea of 'living in a trusting society' is to ignore such explicit warnings then yes it does make you guilty of something - negligence.
It's simply not fair to demand that other people accept liability for your actions when you are literally refusing to read clearly written warnings
This is such a subtle risk, its arguable that a printed warning on a paper container is insufficient. What happens when the packaging is discarded? Another kid enters the house? Your kid gives the toy away?
It's not subtle at all, it's easy to observe the risk from playing with the magnets for a couple of minutes and seeing how powerful they are. When the physical forces involved are self-evident then at some point you have take responsibility for paying attention to what your own senses are telling you. You're literally complaining that this is somehow too hard to think about it for ordinary people, and if you think that then you should be up in arms about the accessibility of gas stations, things make out of glass, and all sorts of other 'subtle' hazards that people navigate on a daily basis.
What happens when the packaging is discarded? The person doing the discarding takes responsibility for leaving the magnets in a safe place where they can not be got at by unsupervised children. I have clusters of neodymium magnets in several places around my house, out of the packaging. I know where they are, I know that I may need to move them if my friends who have kids come to visit (just like I need to move some other things I don't want them getting into), and I know that if I show them off or anyone expresses an interest in them that I have an obligation to point out that they are powerful and dangerous. And just in case, my home insurance policy covers me against financial liability if someone does suffer an injury while visiting my home.
Stop telling me it's a 'subtle risk.' That's complete BS when I can see and feel for myself that the things are really powerful. A subtle risk would be a lump of attractive-looking material whose radioactive nature isn't apparent without some kind of special measuring apparatus. I cannot understand why you are arguing that people should literally disregard the evidence of their senses rather than accept even a modicum of legal liability.
I don't agree with this. I think the risk isn't obvious to many people and we should therefore demand clear labeling. But not a ban.
It's actually not. It's panic about perceived risk. Balloons kill about 8 kids a year, which is 16 times as much as magnet sets (1 death in 2 years). We don't ban balloons, and few people would consider such a ban reasonable despite a clearly worse risk/reward tradeoff. Balloons are definitely not 16x more fun than magnet toys.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2239860
> Most of us trust that toys for kids will be essentially harmless. We choose to live in a trusting society, yes. That doesn't make us guilty of anything.
I don't agree with this at all. There are many toys I still won't give my 2-year-old, and even more that I'll only let her have under supervision. And she's actually an easy kid who doesn't tend to stick random stuff in her mouth.
> This is such a subtle risk, its arguable that a printed warning on a paper container is insufficient. What happens when the packaging is discarded? Another kid enters the house? Your kid gives the toy away?
I actually agree that the risk isn't obvious, unlike some people in this thread. The solution is labeling and education, though, not a ban. Kids die from random toys at a much higher rate that 1 every two years but we don't ban everything (just Kinder eggs, inexplicably).
http://www.poison.org/articles/2012-oct/toy-magnets-are-dang...
> Avoid the use of magnetic beads as fake body piercings.
How about teenagers who play with fireworks and die? Do we need to ban fireworks? Or do we just need parents to educate their children that fireworks are dangerous.
This whole debate is symptomatic of some bigger cultural problem. It reminds me of when some kid shoots themselves with a gun and then the community is all 'too bad, so sad' and no charges are brought against the parent because they've been through the 'tragedy' of losing a child. Well that's tragic for them but it was fatal for the child, and dead children are not getting any justice when their negligent parents are let off the hook for causing the death of another person.
I mean, if I as an adult was hanging out with you and then I died because you handed me something that looked like a can of coke but was actually a hand grenade, then you'd be charged with manslaughter for failing to apprise me of the risk. But when small children get hold of guns and kill themselves (or worse, kill another kid) that's frequently just treated as 'the cost of our 2nd amendment freedom' or some bullshit. there are a lot of cases where parents get off with no legal penalty because the death of a child is so painful, even though they're clearly responsible. That does not make it OK to push the liability onto some third party who wasn't present and who supplied a a dangerous product with a detailed warning about the risks involved in it suse which people chose to ignore.
Also, is there much evidence of teens actually doing this and accidentally swallowing them? I have no doubt that teens are playing with the magnets in stupid ways, but how many teens have swallowed magnets this way and had complications? The CPSC claims its happening but provides no breakout stats for this.
http://onsafety.cpsc.gov/blog/2011/11/10/magnet-dangers/
Also also, I have serious doubts about the accuracy of the claims the CPSC is making. On the page I linked, they clam "22 reports of magnet incidents involving children between the ages of 18 months and 15 years old since June 2009" through Nov 2011 and provide a yearly breakout of all those reports. In the press release poison.org cites, they claim "CPSC staff estimates that small, high powered magnet sets were associated with 1,700 emergency room-treated injuries between 2009 and 2011." So they estimate two orders of magnitude higher than they actually have reports for?
https://www.cpsc.gov/Newsroom/News-Releases/2012/CPSC-Starts...
No, I have not read the more than 1,300 case studies of children taken to hospital after swallowing these magnets.
> Do we ban button batteries also?
We mandate that button batteries are supplied in toys that cannot be opened, or that can only be opened with a screwdriver.
Where did that 1300 number come from? I'm seeing so many random numbers for how often kids are swallowing magnets that I'm doubting the good faith of the CPSC now.
What magnet have you seen in a grocery store or Home Depot that is the size and shape of a small gumball? Link?
I vividly remember kids in late elementary school playing with pencil grips and cola can tabs in their mouths. I was always terrified someone was going to choke to death on one. (They didn't.) These were kids old enough to know that they weren't candy and they still put them in their mouths because kids are just kind of dumb. There are also stories of teens using ball magnets for tongue "piercings" and accidentally swallowing them.
Magnets absolutely don't have to look like candy to be dangerous.
Most ball magnets are also not colorful. Even if the colorful ones were somehow especially dangerous, that wouldn't make all ball magnets especially dangerous.
So sure, he and I were both being negligent. But it also seems like a dangerous set up.
I don't mean to attack you personally in any way, but if you have an awareness that such things as small powerful magnets exist and can imagine what the risks would be, how is it not your job as a parent to be on the lookout for that? You manage to be on the lookout for all sorts of other risks that exist in your household - drowning, fire, chemicals, sharp objects, and so on.
I do not believe that adding an awareness of magnets (which are generally pretty easy to identify because of their magnetic properties causing them to stick to metallic surfaces or each other) causes some unacceptably large burden. You've known what magnets are since you were a small child. You are almost certainly easily able to distinguish between a bunch of magnetic balls and a bunch of non-magnetic ball bearings by simply looking at them. How is it not your responsibility to use that knowledge?
I am glad you are a perfect parent, it is very lucky for you and your children. Congratulations!
I never claimed to be a perfect parent (nice attempt at misdirection there). But I don't try to hold other people responsible for the decisions I make. When people with kids visit me or leave their kids in my care then their safety is my primary responsibility and I'm willing to accept that.
I know teenagers do stupid things, and that they're more likely to do stupid things in the name of fashion. I'm old enough to recall the 1980s when body art first took off and it became cool for guys to wear earrings without being a pirate or a gypsy. I pierced my own ears around this time, despite being warned about everything from the risk of infection to the possibility of illness by hitting an acupuncture point (a risk what was inexplicably not assumed to be true for girls).
Well not only did I end up with holes in my ears but over a the years they did get infected on a few occasions when I didn't clean my earrings properly, and I had to clean out a small but painful and gross cyst. None of this is the fault of the people who manufacture earrings. No results yet on the acupuncture danger but after 30 years I'm beginning to think that warning may have been misplaced.
There's a reason the CPSC banned lawn darts but not blowtorches or medical sharps or the safety pin you probably used to pierce your ear. There's not much ambiguity about the dangerous things the CPSC doesn't care about. But you can't say that about the magnets, which cause truly horrible medical calamities that most ordinary people do not expect.
Also, not sure if we were just hiding on different ends of HN or whatever, but it's good to bump into you again!
1). Prevent this business from existing.
2). Allow toy magnets to exist, thereby allowing X children to die from swallowing toy magnets.
I don't think this is ZenMagnet's fault. But I think placing a restriction on toy magnets is probably a net positive.
This isn't about you. This is about people who don't know what you know. In this case you understand the danger so you think the warnings are an unnecessary insult to your intelligence because you find them obvious. You're ignoring the people out there who don't understand the danger. Imagine a situation where your child came in to contact with something you know nothing about - you'd want information right there in front of you printed on the side, even if someone else who has experience and knowledge about the thing thought that warning was ridiculous.
The suggestion that we should let parents bring dangerous things in to their houses without warnings because they ought to understand the dangers already is utterly ridiculous. The 'kindergarten conditions' you're talking about is having sensible warnings on things. Why would it be better to have empty space, or a marketing message, or a pretty picture where that warning is if the warning could save someones life? It simply isn't, and if you believe it is then you are wrong.
If parents themselves are generally too ignorant, then there's a much bigger problem.
(Odd that someone used a downvote on this.)
This is fairly subtle issue, and strawman analogies add nothing of value to the conversation.
It isn't a straw man. The question is how ultra-safe you'd like your society to be. My argument is that we have dangers all around, and some acceptable and reasonable risk must be associated with living. And it's unavoidable to boot. The society that believes that cushioning every corner eliminates daily risks is living a lie.
The trouble is that if you say that banning magnets is reasonable, nobody listens to you when you tell them that banning the sale of automatic weapons should also be. You're crying wolf with the damn magnets. There are bigger fish to fry!
Why are we expected to believe that adults can't tell the difference between candy and powerful magnets just because they're both shiny and metallic-looking? Why are the very clear warnings supplied with the product somehow unreadable in the face of their shiny roundness?
It's just strange that people seem to want to point at super specific things and say: "those are inherently dangerous!"
We could agree that oxygen is dangerous because it reacts with almost anything. Does that mean we're going to have oxygen banned? :p
If I can teach my dogs not to eat certain things and to stop eating anything when I tell them, other people can certainly teach that to their kids. Risk management is great but what you're describing is risk phobia, which irrationally demands the whole world should be as safe as a kindergarten and that people should have to get special permission to undertake any risk whatsoever.
The Nanny State Didn't Show Up, You Hired It http://web.archive.org/web/20150315003211/http://thelastpsyc...
There are a lot more dangerous things that are a lot less regulated than a wholesale ban. The CPSC needs, apparently, a much strong leash put on it. We need a government, not a nanny state.
One of the problems is the hysteria of the press whenever anything close to bad happens. It's created a culture of hyper critical control systems over defaulting to trusting the common sense of individuals, the ability of information to disseminate to educate peoplel (warning labels, stories of people getting hurt educating people on what not to do, etc), and the ability of parents.
My comment was merely meant as an explication of his comment since your interpretation of his comment seems unsupported and bizarre. He stated clearly "We need government," but feels a wholesale ban is overkill in this case because for more dangerous things, we don't ban them outright.
If you want to check the balance of the legal system, you have to compare actual time served.
I think magformers are the best toy we own.
Good for him!
You don't want to get them stuck between your fingers, but besides keeping them away from visa cards and rotating hard drives, I didn't think much more about the potential dangers. Thank goodness the negligence of my government didn't cause me all manner of danger (kidding).
I bought tiny neodymiums at a store once. They're about 3/4 the size of a dime. You have to pry them off the fridge, they can hang pictures on the wall if a nail is hiding behind, and I _have_ hurt myself with them before. It's easy, and happens before you can blink.
That's the problem. Historically, people thought of permanent magnets as "safe". But modern magnets are so powerful that they have new risks.
2015 Zen Booster Set: 216 Zen Magnets. 6 Spares, .5mm PVC Card and Velvet Sack.
Was: $32.98
Now: $65.96
The 2017 prices are published (I'm guessing the ban doesn't end immediately) and they are indeed 10% cheaper.
[edit] I'm not affiliated with zen magnets in any way, but I bought their largest set available pre-ban and have been following their progress on this ever since. They are an extremely reputable company and I highly recommend them.
https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=sphere+magne...