Essentially, for 2013, there were 559 injuries sampled from pens and pencils among people aged 1 month to 15 years old. There were 297 from scissors - although I might have missed a few classification product codes for scissors, there were quite a few. There were 219 sampled injuries from building sets, of which magnetic balls are included.
However, these are the sample counts. The Historical Estimate I believe is the total injuries over the time period selected. Building sets is by far the least, 2500 less than scissors and almost 10000 less than pens and pencils.
I then read through those cases. In the 219 cases, magnet is mentioned 13 times. Swallow is mentioned 58 times, but I assume this includes other building sets such as Legos, Knex etc.
13/219*6800 = 403 magnetic swallowing injuries over 2013.
This [2] report from the North American Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition mentions 480 magnet ingestions over the past 10 years, roughly 204 occurring over 2013.
There is an argument to be made over severity of injury I believe, but via the numbers, these balls are not as dangerous as scissors or pencils and pens. I frankly find this attempt at a ban ridiculous. What if a child swallows staples? Thumbtacks? These all are things that can be left on a desk that would cause significant injury.
Please correct me if I’m wrong with my interpretation of the data.
[1] http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Research--Statistics/NEISS-Injury-Dat...
[2] http://www.consumerreports.org/content/dam/cro/news_articles...