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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.