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Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that almost no one reads those warnings. Most packages for kids toys will have a warning somewhere on them about how they are a swallow or suffocation hazard. People get desensitized to that constant bombardment of warnings. Unless you spend some time really thinking about it, it might not be clear why swallowing a magnet like this might be so much more dangerous than swallowing a something of this size made of different material.

That also factors into your point about other household items. Most of the household items that are dangerous to children are very clearly dangerous. It is much easier for a parent to overlook the danger of these magnets compared with stuff like potentially poisonous household cleaners.

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You say "almost no one" heeds the warnings, but it's certainly not true that almost everyone gives tiny magnets to toddlers.

I am confused, I didn't say anything close to "almost everyone gives tiny magnets to toddlers" and that wouldn't even be a relevant factor in this discussion. My point was that most people don't understand how dangerous tiny magnets might be for toddlers.

The inverse of "almost no one" is "almost everyone". When you say that "almost no one" reads warnings, you imply the set "almost everyone" is going to encounter problems.

> " My point was that most people don't understand how dangerous tiny magnets might be for toddlers."

And yet, far from "most people" giving magnets to toddlers, very few people seem to.

You missed the point.

Almost everyone lets toddlers play with toys that say "Choking hazard: Ages 3+", because that warning comes on basically all toys, including stuff like Jenga blocks, sidewalk chalk, ....

Any parent who disallows their child from playing with any “age 3+” labeled toys/objects before age 3 is going to be significantly delaying their child’s development of basic fine motor skills.

Some parents might become desensitized to the labels since the warning is used over-broadly, and might not realize that tiny magnets are something you have to be extra careful about, because the effects of swallowing magnets are generally worse than the effects of swallowing some little piece of plastic.

No, you've completely missed the point. Whether or not "almost nobody heeds the warnings" is true or not is irrelevant because regardless of whether or not they're reading the labels their observed behavior is that most of them do not give toys like this to young kids.

You don't need to read a warning label, or even know of the special medical threat of swallowed magnets to think this 'toy' was a bad idea for a small child. Would you give a toddler a box of completely inert culinary grade stainless steel BBs to play with? Of course you wouldn't. Your kid could eat them and shit them out to his hearts content, but he still might chip a tooth trying to bite them and even if he were toothless why would you give a kid even harmless metal balls? They're just going to wind up stuck in his nose or something. Nobody gives inert glass marbles this small to young kids. It's a bad idea all around even discounting the unique threat magnets pose. Which is probably why there are very few confirmed cases of kids actually eating these magnets.

> box of completely inert culinary grade stainless steel BBs to play with?

If you did, it wouldn’t really be a big deal. Toddlers daily encounter playgrounds full of tiny rocks, wood chips, etc. which are more dangerous than the BBs. Swallowing BBs is comparable to swallowing cherry pits. It’s very unlikely to be life threatening. Typically there is no noticeable effect, or there might be some minor discomfort as it works through the digestive system.

I would be entirely comfortable letting my under 2 year old play with BB-sized steel or glass balls, under loose adult supervision, from a safety perspective (from a that’s-going-to-be-a-mess perspective I can well imagine avoiding giving kids BBs). More realistically, I can imagine letting an older child play with a box of BBs without worrying that a toddler would eat a few and die. Larger marbles are more of a choking hazard, and require closer adult supervision.

But swallowing magnets is much more dangerous.

> I would be entirely comfortable letting my under 2 year old play with BB-sized steel or glass balls, under loose adult supervision, from a safety perspective

You'll be spending time in ED having them removed from the nose or ear.

Fair enough. Thankfully we haven’t yet had any pebbles shoved in nose or ear, and we play with those on a regular basis. I feel like little objects making it into the mouth is significantly more common.

It’s very easy to overlook the risk of these magnets pinching the intestines.

Similarly children often swallow batteries and no one thinks it that’s a good thing but many people do not realize that the child can die from it and it should be treated as an emergency.

Did you miss the part where basically nobody would give their child a box full of non-magnetic BBs anyway? Even if you had no clue magnets were dangerous, if you thought they were the safety equivalent of stainless steel BBs, you wouldn't give a toddler a box of them.

Toddlers were not the only children being harmed. For example, teens were using the magnets as fake mouth piercings and swallowing them.

>The inverse of "almost no one" is "almost everyone". When you say that "almost no one" reads warnings, you imply the set "almost everyone" is going to encounter problems.

That does not follow logically at all. Just because someone doesn't heed the warning doesn't mean they will fall victim to what they are being warned about. Think of it like jaywalking. "Almost no one" heeds the warnings about the dangers of jaywalking. That does not mean that "almost everyone" would be hit by a car. Someone being mindless of the dangers of an activity does not mean they will automatically succumb to those dangers, but that also doesn't mean that the dangers were not real, serious, and worth protecting against.

> "That does not follow logically at all."

I never said it follows in a strict mathematical sense, I said it was implied, and implied that it was implied in an informal sense. And I stand by that. By saying that most people don't read warning labels you absolutely meant to suggest that that a very large portion of the population would have trouble with products which require warning labels.

You can say I phrased something poorly which implied something I didn't intend. However, you lose all credibility when you get to the point of saying I "absolutely meant to suggest" something. It is frankly insulting that you are pretending to know my intentions better than I do.

To be fair, then the problem here are parents not the adult toys. And if you start banning things for the general population, with which negligent parents could kill their kids, there is an extremely long list to go.

My magnets wont get eaten by anyone and suprise neither will my cleaning supplies. There is also no one touching my knifes and no one is putting flatware in my toaster or wall socket. There is also no one drowning in my make belief pool.

If you really belief, that protecting children from their parents miss judgment, than banning people with children in their household from buying and owning every last of those items. Which obviously would be extremely discriminating towards adult humans with offsprings.

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