139 ms·
Zen Magnets: 6 Years of Battle End in Victory
- rjbwork 8y agoGood for them! I bought an extra set because of their legal battle a couple of years ago. They're sitting on my desk right now. I'm glad they've won, it's a poke in the eyes against ineffective prohibition, and a win for personal responsibility. I'd prefer that there was a regulation on these such that they were only available to adults, however. They can cause terrible injuries that require surgery in uninformed and impulsive children.
- mvid 8y agoHow would that regulation even work? The children who would be eating them aren't old enough to be buying them, or anything for that matter.
- mehwoot 8y agoJust that they need to have a visible warning. If you go to Zen Magnet's website there are big warnings telling you that if you eat these you could die and that you definitely don't want to give them to children. I think that's reasonable.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago> I'd prefer that there was a regulation on these such that they were only available to adults, however. They can cause terrible injuries that require surgery in uninformed and impulsive children. I agree. There seems to be a category of products that are definitely safe in the right hands, but they do look particularly "overly innocuous" and, while I don't think they should be banned, they should at least require some sort of "We're not kidding around, these can actually kill you" warning in big, bold letters. A couple years ago I read about a teenager who died after ODing on caffeine powder he bought on Amazon. While there were lots of tasteless "Darwin award" comments when this happened, it's not hard to think that someone would think a spoonful of caffeine powder would be like a couple of NoDoz, instead of actually being like 30 cups of coffee. Seems like there is a middle ground between outright banning these products and completely unregulated sales of potentially dangerous items like this.
- JackCh 8y agoThe FDA banned pure caffeine powder but as far as I can tell caffeine pills are still legal and widely available. I go easy on the stuff these days, but when I was younger I once took way too many (10 pills equivalent to 20 cups of coffee IIRC) and was sure I was going to die. I understand the problem with loose powder is it makes it more difficult to get a precise dosage, but easy dosage pills won't help much if you're a dumbass who doesn't respect caffeine. Ultimately personal responsibility needs to be emphasized.
- natosaichek 8y agoWhen I ordered a set of magnets, it did come with a bright warning (https://images1.westword.com/imager/one-of-the-warning-labels-that-comes-with/u/original/6527906/feature_warning.jpg https://images1.westword.com/imager/one-of-the-warning-label...)
- rjbwork 8y agoYeah ditto, but that wasn't regulated afaik until the Zen fight.
- tomatotomato37 8y agoThat's a pretty crap warning to be honest, it looks like a promotion for a company/product name OMFG more than anything. Replace all that with the six words "DO NOT EAT, YOU WILL DIE", and it would be brutally effective
- JackCh 8y agoNo way, that's not good enough. We can't trust adults to read. The packaging needs vivid color photographs of autopsies for maximum emotional impact. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cigarettes_brazil.JPG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cigarettes_brazil.JPG
- mcphage 8y agoIF YOU EAT THIS YOU WILL DIE, AND IT WILL HURT THE ENTIRE TIME YOU ARE DYING.
- pvg 8y agouninformed and impulsive children Those are usually just called 'children'.
- thomasfedb 8y agoCouldn't agree more. Disappointed to see the innocence of childhood mischaracterised in such a negative light. Children deserve our care and protection, not our scorn.
- foobar1962 8y agoFrom another article on the case on westword.com: >Jackson's order doesn't mean the agency can no longer seek to shut down the magnet trade; it simply sends the case back for further review before a possibly less biased panel. Is this really a victory?
- romwell 8y agoThe victory here is that Zen is not currently in active litigation, which is a huge drain on resources. Given the overwhelming amount of data that is out there that one shouldn't restrict magnets more than military weapons, I have high hopes that an less biased commission would not advocate for a total and absolute ban.
- jonhendry18 8y agoThe magnets were never banned from industrial use and sale.
- damm 8y agothe CPB is dying under Trump. So it's not really a victory; but i'm sure they are happy they can sell their magnetic balls of death. > I bought a pair of bucky balls; it was fun but once you start loosing them and if you have pets... best not to buy them small enough that it's easy to loose
- eli 8y agoI think you are confusing the CFPB and the CPSC
- jonhendry18 8y agoTrump'll kill the CPSC eventually.
- JackCh 8y agoThey're not that easy to lose, on account of being incredibly magnetic. Even if you throw a handful across the room, they'll stay stuck to each other. If you pick them off one by one and throw them then you'll lose them, but sweep around the room with a piece of metal or more magnets and you'll find them again pretty quick. Characterizing them as "magnetic balls of death" is very unfair considering that not many people have actually been killed or maimed by them. Driving your kids around town in a convertible is probably more dangerous than owning these magnets. Owning a swimming pool certainly is.
- flashman 8y agoPeople love to say that they shouldn't be prevented from owning these toys just because some other person's child might get injured, and I sympathise with that point of view. But at their peak, three thousand children a year were visiting emergency departments for suspected magnet ingestion (a number which declined after the CPSC ban).[1] Lawn darts were banned on a mere 750 ED visits annually.[2] The fact is, we live in a society and (as with fireworks and other dangerous toys that could be labelled 'adults only') the cost of being able to have these magnets on your desk is probably dozens or hundreds of kids getting very sick. [1]https://europepmc.org/abstract/med/29135818 https://europepmc.org/abstract/med/29135818 [2]http://mentalfloss.com/article/31176/how-one-dad-got-lawn-darts-banned http://mentalfloss.com/article/31176/how-one-dad-got-lawn-da...
- abstrakraft 8y agoOne has to wonder why only numbers for suspected, rather than confirmed, magnet ingestion are reported.
- romwell 8y agoThe other comment betrays the reason: because the numbers are bogus and are artificially inflated to be high by making a query too broad (it includes marbles, BB balls, batteries, etc). Just another example of the FUD spread by CPSC which people ended up eating wholesale.
- thomasfedb 8y agoWhich query are you referring to? It's important to understand that the first step in a systematic review is to identify all the potentially relevant literature (the "search"), only after which are the studies found screened for inclusion. We're conservative in the direction of over-inclusion during the "search", but in the opposite direction during the "screen".
- romwell 8y agoWe - are you one of the authors? Perhaps you can clarify the following paragraph from [1], page 8: >Inclusion Criteria and Variable Classification: >Subjects from 0-17 years old were included using a primary search term for diagnosis of “ingested object” from the time period of 2002-2015. Cases of ingested objects were classified as “suspected magnet ingestion” (SMI) if the term “magnet” appeared anywhere in the narrative section of the database. Where's the screening part you mention? I didn't find anywhere that the inclusion criteria implied that magnets have actually been ingested - or that the results were filtered in any way other than a keyword search. E.g.: "Child ingested a marble, parent worries that it could have been a magnet" would pass this inclusion criterion. [1]http://sci-hub.nu/10.1097/MPG.0000000000001830 http://sci-hub.nu/10.1097/MPG.0000000000001830
- cantrevealname 8y ago> If a regulator agrees to change a rule and something bad happens, they can easily lose their career. Whereas if they change a rule and something good happens, they don’t even get a reward. So, it’s very asymmetric. – Elon Musk A worse asymmetry: If a person spends years and his own money battling a regulation, and something good happens for the entire economy, the person doesn't get rewarded. In fact, the person might suffer when competitors who were just sitting around with no skin in the game can now freely enter the market against the person who fought so hard to open up the marketplace. Another good example is the Carterfone decision[1], a landmark FCC decision that allowed devices to connect directly to the telephone system. Prior to Thomas Carter's years-long fight, AT&T considered it illegal to connect anything to your telephone. The ruling paved the way for answering machines, fax machines, and modems. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carterfone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carterfone
- maym86 8y agoWeird how it is that we can ban magnets but not guns.
- newman8r 8y agoI owned buckeyballs many years ago. I've since lost them, but every now and then I'll find an errant ball attached to a random piece of metal around the house.
- tptacek 8y agoI like to play with liquid nitrogen. We have parties and make cocktails with it and do instant ice cream. In a couple weeks, we're going to do a thing where we make Dippin' Dots with them. Liquid nitrogen is fun stuff. It's also dangerous, and not in obvious ways. It's like the opposite of a cauldron of 400f peanut oil --- if that oil could also quickly asphyxiate you. And your intuition for how to mitigate the risk is bad; for instance: gloves would be a mistake. And that's just for handling it; freeze something the wrong way and give it to a friend to ingest and you could perforate their alimentary canal. Should people be able to play with LN? Absolutely. Should someone start a company and sell super-fun mini-dewars to people as a novelty item, like the Soda Stream of chilling? If they did, a lot of people would get hurt. I am fine with it being a little bit of a hassle to get LN, and I am fine with it being a little bit of a hassle to buy a pretty boring desk toy. The CPSC appeared to have been fine with that too; its problem wasn't with you owning little magnets, but with companies selling them as novelty stress relieving desk devices to rekindle your sense of childlike wonder and also make excellent refrigerator art (all things on Zen Magnets current page). I don't think HN's take on magnets and the CPSC is very sophisticated or interesting or really even all that well informed.
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- leigh999 8y agotrue. yes. lol
- brusch64 8y agoCan you please elaborate why gloves are bad ? I've never handled liquid nitrogen, but everytime I've seen someone handle it they wore gloves like these: https://www.2spi.com/category/cryo-gloves/ https://www.2spi.com/category/cryo-gloves/
- boobsbr 8y ago
- theshadeslayer 8y agoLegit confused this with Zenpencils.
- iamgopal 8y agoIs liquid nitrogen a waste by product of generating the oxygen ? Can it be used for cooling ?
- isrsal 8y agoThis is pure evil. My 3 years old swallowed some of these magnets (there was only a choking hazard warning on the magnets which we got from Amazon and we had no idea about the danger). The poor boy had to go through an emergency surgery, be in the hospital for a week, and be traumatized. The over all cost was about $100k. I don't understand how this shit is legal. It's much worse than some substances for which people spend many years in prison. What a disgrace!
- nurettin 8y agoI'm very sorry you've gone through that. Did your kid only swallow magnets, or did he swallow other objects around the house as well?
- isrsal 8y agoHe specifically swallowed “Bucky balls”, which are small yet powerful magnets.
- ddtaylor 8y agoDid you know they were magnets?
- tropdrop 8y agoSo he never swallowed Zen Magnets, then. The distinction between Bucky balls and Zen is outlined many times - Bucky balls being responsible for many injuries like these and Zen balls for zero injuries is the reason Zen won the suit.
- jonhendry18 8y agoThe distinction is that Bucky balls were more successful than Zen, so there were more purchased, so injuries were more likely to happen with Bucky balls.
- cthalupa 8y agoThat's a horrific experience and I am sorry you and your child had to go through it. But people have similar stories (or worse) about their children being harmed by other household objects, from bleach to electric outlets to plenty of other things. It isn't evil - much less pure evil. It isn't a disgrace. And they aren't worse than substances which people spend time in prison for. It's a product that should have had a better warning label on it that properly explained the dangers. Just because something can be dangerous doesn't mean it should be banned. We'd have to ban a billion things in modern living.
- Digit-Al 8y agoAmerica is insane. Probably the only country that will argue for banning magnets and against banning handguns.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y agoYeah, it's completely nuts. I'm a believer in the right to own firearms for various reasons and it's still insane, there's absolutely no consistency to how products are regulated. In fact, it's a frequent gripe of firearm enthusiasts. Full auto is banned, but bump-fire stocks aren't. A rifle with a barrel than 16 inches is subject to special rules, but a handgun with a 2 inch barrel isn't. There's even a joke that goes around: "If OSHA were in charge of the ATF, suppressors would be mandatory".
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ddtaylor 8y agoSo they won their legal battle, but in the process their entire company was essentially destroyed, right? If that's true then what is the difference between the government agencies having to simply file a suit versus actually win it?
- boobsbr 8y agoOne of the great fears of getting sued by the government. Complete bankruptcy for defending yourself. If you win, can you sue for damages and defense costs? If so, will the government even give you a fair amount of compensation?
- jonhendry18 8y agoHow much of a company does it really require to order magnets and packaging on alibaba?
- ddtaylor 8y agoHow much do you think he spent on litigation? Lawyers are pretty expensive. Even if you don't like the company that was effected, what stops the government agency from using the same tactics on one you do like and putting them out of business without having to win a court case?
- pvaldes 8y agoCouldn't a large amount of this stuff in your desktop damage a computer or wipe a SD card? I assume that the loose little balls aren't enough small to end fitting inside a USB connector or something like that. If not, what could happen hypothetically?
- Reason077 8y agoI'm curious: what exactly makes these magnets so dangerous when swallowed? Is it just the case that if multiple magnets are swallowed, they will clump together and cause obstructions, or is there more to it? A single magnet ought to pass through easily and be pretty benign, right? Contrast to button-cell / "coin" batteries which are incredibly dangerous if ingested, and where swallowing a single one can cause severe internal burns or even death. Yet we don't see many calls to ban these, despite being very common in all kinds of household devices...
- DanBC 8y agoWhen you swallow two magnets they can attract each other and perforate the stomach or intestine. > Yet we don't see many calls to ban these, despite being very common in all kinds of household devices... Battery compartments now come screwed shut, where they didn't in the past. This is because of the danger of button batteries. We can't ban the batteries because they have widespread legitimate use. Toy magnets don't.