This is fucking stupid. A 13 year old is old enough to read the "don't fucking eat this you dumbass" labels on the packaging. Do you know how useful neodymium magnets are? You're gonna just ban them cuz this kid's dumb enough to swallow a hundred fucking rare earth magnets and didn't go to the doctor for half a week? Stupid
Next they're going to ban CR2032 button cells
(I was gonna put a /s at the end but I can vividly imagine that happening now :/ )
Not sure if you're aware, but Duracell and probably others coat button batteries in a chemical that tastes bad in order to discourage ingestion.
I see where these regulations are coming from, but we can't just ban away anything that could be harmful. I just recently bought a bunch of magnets like these for a using in 3D printed models. I don't have any kids, but I do have pets and so they're stored away in their own case and not left around. People just need to be responsible. I mean, we don't ban bleach but you sure as hell shouldn't drink it!
I was at a company picknic this summer and was watching people trying to play a pitiful version of Lawn Darts. The darts were weighted but would just bounce off the ground and ruin a good shot. Lawn darts, or darts of any kind, simply don't work as a game when you take the pointy end away. I will say though, that a company outing where there's people milling about is not a good place to play lawn darts, so I wouldn't have used the real ones here even if you could.
Proper product packaging, like we use in medicine canisters, and perhaps an extra disclaimer/waiver on purchase is the way to go on these things IMO.
In Australia CR2032s have a double wall thick plastic blister packaging that is basically impossible to open.
You need scissors AND some time.
This is an example of a sensible control. Double walled, difficult to open packages may be a small inconvenience for adults, but it makes it near impossible for a toddler to open. Button cell batteries are seriously dangerous if swallowed.
Banning neodymium magnets is fucking stupid, and unfortunately the world seems to be heading in the direction of banning everything in the name of "safety".
Yeah stop banning everything that can hurt you because ONE person does something stupid. Like we say in my language, one time is zero times. Everything can hurt you. If many people start doing it, maybe it's time to consider a ban.
The magnets, which have been banned in New Zealand since January 2013, were bought on online shopping platform Temu, they said They did not. One could argue that the ban may or may not make sense (preferably after looking up the specifics), but your statement is wrong.
I am so confused. Why did he eat them? Magnets are banned in New Zealand since 2013? Are they marketed as special eating magnets? 
Small high-powered magnets, specifically
Small strong magnets are harmless to play with – but if they are ingested or inhaled, they can become attracted to each other and join up in the digestive system. If left untreated, this can result in major tissue damage, sepsis and even death.
So basically banned for this exact reason.
It's fine if you only eat one, though. Just make sure it's out before eating another one. 🤷♂️
This is exactly what I do and it's never bothered me.
The real question that remains unanswered: why the fuck did that boy try to earn a Darwin Award? One or two would be an accident, 100 is done on purpose
I get an unsupervised toddler eating something they shouldn't have been able to get to in the first place...
A 13 years old should at least have a functional brain.
I would like to remind you of Tide pods, planking, and ghost riding the wip.
Planking was just lying down on things, so hardly an instance of teenagers endangering themselves.
The tide pod thing wasn't exactly what it seemed to be. Some children with learning disabilities and some people with dementia had died from mistaking laundry pods for food. At some point, some media outlets decided to sensationalise it by leaving out the bit about learning disabilities. That meant that there were teenagers who thought other teenagers had died from eating them, so they could make videos pretending they'd done that, just like teenagers have staged videos to make it look like they're doing dangerous things that they aren't really doing ever since people have let them have cameras. Some of them decided that the easiest way to pretend was to put a real laundry pod in their mouth, pretend to chew it and swallow, pretend to die, and then cut the video and spit it out. If they checked the relevant warnings on the packet, they just said not to eat them and to rinse their eyes if they got any there, so this plan might seem safe. However, laundry pods are so corrosive against mucous membranes that putting one in your mouth and spitting it out immediately because it starts to burn immediately can still be fatal or cause permanent injury. The media reported the deaths and injuries as if teenagers were intentionally eating laundry pods, rather than pretending in a way the packet implied might be safe, so most people weren't learning that pretending was also deadly and that the warnings on the packet weren't exhaustive, so it just made fake tide pod challenge videos even more tempting. If the reporting had been more responsible, then most people would have first heard even pretending to eat laundry pods can kill rather than teenagers are eating laundry pods.
I only knew snippets of this as well even years later so I appreciate the rundown. Thanks for typing it up!
Not gonna lie, banning 5x2mm magnets is insane. They're very useful, I've seen countless DIY projects or 3D print models that use them and in general they're just handy. It seems insane to me to ban them for such a reason. There are infinite ways in which children can hurt themselves, should we ban stoves because they can get hot? That ban sounds a bit too much to me.
The ban was specifically in the context of toys.
We banned toy magnets. Magnets for other purposes are still completely legal.
Exactly. I never heard of a magnet ban in my life.
Yea I feel like Temu is not at fault here, but rather, a lack of parents and a lack of brain
Was scratching my head wondering what got him into swallowing so many of those magnets for no other logical reason in the first place, except maybe because of some online Tiktok dare where logic is thrown out of the window.
And they laugh at the USA because Kinder eggs with toys in them are banned.
Magnets are banned in New Zealand?
Where they banned in all their various applications? Because I had a scare when my 2-year-old granddaughter found a box with a magnetic latch and the magnet had been torn out. We thought she ate it. But after scouring the area we found it, and it's a thin neodymium magnet. Went through the whole house making sure boxes like that were out of her reach.
One magnet is harmless. The problem is when you eat more than one, and they pinch their way through the intestine.
I still have a set of BuckyBalls that I bought before the ban. They're kind of a cool toy to fidget with, but I understand why they're banned.
How is Temu allowed to sell items which are explicutly banned in that country?
Customs cannot possibly scan every package coming in.
Parcel gets marked as childs toy.
Honestly pretty good chance it gets through.
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