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Sure thing, but everything is dangerous if you let kids eat them. Imagine your kids drinking bleach because it looks like lemonade. Or sitting on the stove beca

Sure thing, but everything is dangerous if you let kids eat them. Imagine your kids drinking bleach because it looks like lemonade. Or sitting on the stove because it's nice and warm. Or eating bees because they are nice and fuzzy. Or eating batteries because they ace small and shiny. Or eating the buttons off of their shirts, which then may be brittle, break inside their bodies and puncture something. Or what about sitting behind a door and someone then opening that door, hitting them just the wrong way causing permanent blindness... It's just strange that people seem to want to point at super specific things and say: "those are inherently dangerous!" We could agree that oxygen is dangerous because it reacts with almost anything. Does that mean we're going to have oxygen banned? :p

codingdave 10y ago
Apply the standard risk management quadrants -- magnets are small and easy to swallow, so the likelihood of an incident is high if magnets exist in toys. The consequence is emergency medical interventions, which is also high. So it falls into the worst quadrant. Many of the other things you mentioned have either a lower likelihood, or lower consequence, so they are not as serious.
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  Nice in theory but you can say the same thing about coins and many other things, such as paperclips. That's why you have to constantly watch kids up to the age of 3, because they just put everything in their mouths. After that age, though, they're expected to pay some attention to parents who tell them 'don't eat that.' If I can teach my dogs not to eat certain things and to stop eating anything when I tell them, other people can certainly teach that to their kids. Risk management is great but what you're describing is risk phobia, which irrationally demands the whole world should be as safe as a kindergarten and that people should have to get special permission to undertake any risk whatsoever.

codingdave 10y ago

Apply the standard risk management quadrants -- magnets are small and easy to swallow, so the likelihood of an incident is high if magnets exist in toys. The consequence is emergency medical interventions, which is also high. So it falls into the worst quadrant. Many of the other things you mentioned have either a lower likelihood, or lower consequence, so they are not as serious.

anigbrowl 10y ago
Nice in theory but you can say the same thing about coins and many other things, such as paperclips. That's why you have to constantly watch kids up to the age of 3, because they just put everything in their mouths. After that age, though, they're expected to pay some attention to parents who tell them 'don't eat that.' If I can teach my dogs not to eat certain things and to stop eating anything when I tell them, other people can certainly teach that to their kids. Risk management is great but what you're describing is risk phobia, which irrationally demands the whole world should be as safe as a kindergarten and that people should have to get special permission to undertake any risk whatsoever.