Why do BIC pens have a hole in the lid? (2016) | Hacker News Reader

Why do BIC pens have a hole in the lid? (2016)

independent.co.uk

77 pointsbookofjoe33 comments

Snopes says that in the UK 9 children died on pen lids between 1970 and 1984. Since the holes in the lids zero children choked to death. Is the 100/yr in the USA really true?

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/holes-pen-caps-prevent-cho...

The story says 100 people per year in the US, not specifically children, die of choking on pen lids. I can't find any source for that number. But choking is the third leading cause of death by unintentional injury (https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/deaths-by-demograph...). The vast majority of choking cases are from food, and largely by the elderly.

Edit: it appears the source for the claim is Rachfeed[1], the news and entertainment blog that this Independent story comes from. Rachfeed links to a story from OMG Facts[2] which is down due to a DNS error. The Wayback Archive only has 1 record for that page, and it's unavailable. So the only source for the claim is basically nonexistent.

A sultan-and-oligarch-owned tabloid quoting a rag quoting an unavailable source. This is a newspaper of record in the UK.

CNET ran a similar story[3] in 2016 with the "100 deaths a year" figure, quoting The Independent as a source. Thousands of sites seem to have republished it, quoting those two as sources.

[1] https://rachfeed.com/pen-caps-hole/ [2] http://www.omgfacts.com/health/8329/Pen-caps-cause-100-death... [3] https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/pen-caps-have-holes-beca...

I'm quite surprised that this actually works (or seems to, based on the Snopes link). The holes in these pen caps are tiny, and I feel like if I had one lodged in my airway I still wouldn't be able to suck enough air through that. But I guess you can't argue with results.

You can try breathing through one to see. But the hole may also prevent it getting sucked into/deeper into your windpipe in the first place by preventing a seal.

Trying it out might lead to the cap getting accidentally sucked into the wind pipe. Please be careful. Edit spelling.

Come on. Millions of people put pen caps in their mouths. Nobody's going to need a special warning when they're specifically thinking about the choking hazard.

I wonder if computers have (will?) replaced pens in schools?

Is lid the preferred term for a pen cap in the UK? To me, a lid is always something flat(ish). This is not a criticism, of course! Just a curious observation…

Not sure if it's the preferred term or not but the cover for the business end of a pen is often referred to as a lid.

Either term would be acceptable in the UK though. We generally don't make the distinction.

We also colloquially sometimes refer to a bike helmet as a "lid" too. Although that is slang.

You hear lid a lot more than cap.

Yes, lid is the normal term here.

Cap, to me, sounds like something one would do, or one would add, to a pipe stop the flow of a liquid, or just to seal it off.

Or a hat, of course.

The heads of Lego figures started having a hole in the top for the same reason I believe.

Oh, I remember seeing the occasional Lego head with a solid top when I was younger but never gave it a second thought. I want to say this changed in the early 1990s at the latest?

How does the whole in the cap prevent ink from drying?

From the article: "it is not about preventing the ink drying on the nib."

Also from the article:

> "In addition to help prevent the pen from leaking, [...]"

So maybe the hole somehow prevents leaks, which would prevent drying in the sense of no more ink :) Maybe it prevents leaks by making the ink at the tip dry out.

The lid prevents leaks by acting as a physical gap between the ball and whatever it would write/leak on :)

Imagine putting a pen, ball down, into a breast pocket with vs without a lid

Not a problem with ballpoints.

Fountain pens are a different matter and many modern pens have perforated caps. The usual fix is a spot of candle wax to seal them up. (The wax can easily be removed with warm water should you feel the need).

A ball point pen dispenses ink by the little ball rotating. So the lid is more to prevent that happening than to stop the residual ink dying.

That said, the only time I've ever had a ball point leak is when the ball is upwards and the ink reservoir opening down, so I would always put the lid on and pop it in the pocket lid down, making a mockery of the clip.

"A hundred people every year in the United States reportedly choke to death on these pen lids." :|

"People" can include toddlers, etc.

Yeah, two-year-olds love to put random found objects in their mouths, often accidentally inhale them, and often lack the correct throat motions to unstick a round object.

If memory serves, pennies are the most common object for young children to choke on, coupled by the fact that anemia makes them “tasty”. Perhaps we need to consider adding holes in coins to reduce that.

Between most metals tasting "sweet" and the mouth being a baby's foremost sensitive way of accruing information about something, babies and small kids are instinctively driven to put anything and everything in their mouth if it fits and consider metals as food until sternly educated otherwise.

It takes a long time before any of the other senses become mature enough to be (more) useful avenues of accruing information and parents can finally stop worrying about it.

I choked on a penny when I was a kid, had to be taken to the hospital and got it out.

They said that most just pass though the digestive system, I was special

I'm curious, if you were choking on a penny how did you even survive long enough to get to a hospital? Going without air will kill you in a matter of minutes, tops.

It only partially blocked my airway. I got to the hospital in minutes also, I was a toddler, my parents took me. Luckily we lived less than 2 miles from the hospital.

Holes in coins have many other advantages, including reduce material volume, potentially tactile feedback if we could have them different shapes, and so much more.

Would there be downsides outside of manufacturing cost and having to design with the hole in mind ?

In my humble experience, by far the best usage of holed coins such as the old 25 spanish pesetas coin (https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivo:Pesetas_fin_siglo_XX.j...) is the ability to serve as a stopgap for spinning top launching rope (see https://www.ionlitio.com/images/2017/08/la-peonza-moneda.jpg). Fond memories!

Ha! That unlocked some child memories! Gracias :-)

Coins used to have holes in them more often so that they could be put onto a string for counting/storage.

Children apparently. And common enough apparently that ISO formalized it:

> This document specifies requirements to reduce the risk of asphyxiation from caps for writing and marking instruments. It relates to such instruments which in normal or foreseeable circumstances are likely to be used by children up to the age of 14 years.

- ISO 11540:2021, https://www.iso.org/standard/81889.html

Things like this is what I think about when people talk about regulatory overreach. There are just so many details that need to be laid out for a society to function smoothly.

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