Toddler dies after ingesting Magnetix toy
Nolan got the a set of Magnetix
recently. If you're not familiar with them, they are little magnets encased in plastic cylinders and the come with
magnet balls. You can build all sorts of cool designs by attaching all the magnets together. I worried about the tiny
pieces - less than an inch long - getting lost and ending up on the floor...and eventually into the mouth of little Q.
After reading this tragic story, I'm going to
put the Magnetix away until Quin is much older.Kenny Sweet, a toddler from Redmond, Wash., died November 24th after ingesting two cylinder pieces from his 10-year-old brother's Magnetix set. The pieces apparently had fallen onto a rug and the one-year-old boy found and ingested them. He showed flu-like symptoms, vomiting for a day and the parents were unaware that he had swallowed the magnets. When he was still sick the following day, the parents took him to the hospital and he died shortly thereafter of cardiac arrest. Apparently the two magnets pinched his intestines together, causing septic shock, and his body shut down.
The medical examiners took the set from the family and have reported the case to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to review the safety of the product. The store where the set was purchased has removed Magnetix from their shelves and has also contacted the toy's manufacturer, RoseArt.
According to the Radiological Society of America, kids who swallow more than one magnet need immediate medical attention because the magnets can attract each other and block off or perforate the intestines. Scary stuff.
[via King County Journal]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
sarah gilbert 12-21-2005 @ 7:27PM
oh dear. i am picking those darned things up every day. now i HAVE to put those away for GOOD.
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Jay Allen 12-21-2005 @ 8:24PM
Holy crap - this is right in our city. I might even live near this family. And here we are with the HUGE tub of Magnetix in the closet waiting to be wrapped.
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charlene 12-21-2005 @ 8:41PM
having played with them for the past few days, they are seriously easy to lose. easier then legos because they ROLL. i'm curious to see if they get recalled or new labeling.
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meg 12-21-2005 @ 9:04PM
my friends young daughter has little magnetic earrings. Her daughter isn't at a real choking age, however, sometimes the girl puts the earring on the skin under her lip and the magnet in her mouth - I'll have to tell her to watch out.
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Missy 12-22-2005 @ 3:52AM
I live north of Redmond, in Everett, and was watching the news tonight. They had the mom on there and she was demonstrating just how powerful the magnets are. She had one on top of her finger and it was strong enough to hold the other magnet on the bottom of her finger, through the bone!
Dang...talk about sad. That poor baby! Was he in a lot of pain? Those poor people. I can't imagine going through that. Oh, so sad!
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momma2mingbu 12-22-2005 @ 8:40AM
How sad that this happened. That poor family. And the poor older sibling the toy belonged too...I hope he doesn't feel guilty or responsible in any way for what happened. I can't imagine a child having to live with those kind of thoughts about a sibling's death.
For those of you who already have the toys (we do) there is a pretty simple way to keep track of them though. Limit when/where your children are allowed to play with them. Get a tray with a nice rim around the edges of it and require that the children play with them in/on the tray, preferably at a table. Then there should be less chance of anything rolling away and getting lost. This is how we've done both the Magnetix and small Legos with my oldest when his sisters were small enough that I was worried about the little pieces getting swallowed.
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John McCormick 12-22-2005 @ 4:59PM
It was very unfortunate that this would happen, however, the probability of it occurring again are minimal, somewhat on the order of winning the lottery or less.
The problem is that too many people are too quick to jump on the bandwagon to make something illegal or prohibit it when it is an utterly rare occurence. If it moves your heartstrings then we should outlaw it! On that basis we'd make just about everything illegal.
Focus on the fact that a child was harmed and that it makes good sense not to allow your children to swallow ANYTHING AT ALL other than food. That way the 900 million other items that can kill your children won't kill them either.
I sincerely do sympathize with the parents of this baby, because I have three small children a bit older than this now, and I can imagine how I would feel to lose one. However, we also have the Magnetix toy and it is great! We certainly won't be hiding this from our children in the future... If you decide to get rid of yours, let me know.
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VeronaMMMM 12-23-2005 @ 10:29AM
The problem is that the tiny, powerful magnets became dislodged from the toy's plastic pieces and subsequently ingested. If the magnets didn't become separated from the toy, they would have never been swallowed. I think the manufacturer needs to fix this design flaw or at least acknowledge it.
Reply