Six Retailers Announce Recall of Buckyballs and Buckycubes 343
thereitis writes "The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), in cooperation with six retailers, is announcing the voluntary recall of all Buckyballs and Buckycubes high-powered magnet sets due to ingestion hazard. CPSC continues to warn that these products contain defects in the design, warnings and instructions, which pose a substantial risk of injury and death to children and teenagers. An administrative complaint has been filed which is rare, as CPSC has filed only four administrative complaints in the past 11 years."
This follows last year's ban on buckyballs.
Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does this even need a warning? If you're too stupid not to understand to either A) not ingest these, or B) not give them to someone not old enough to know better, then by all means, swallow them all, then go get an MRI.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
My 5 year old gets to play with my set, but the 3 year old (who doesn't eat toys) has close supervision, especially since these look like dragee, candy he has had before.
The problem is that a proper warning is hard when everything is deadly already. I'm surprised bottled water doesn't come with a DHMO warning label. When everything has a warning on it, adding a real warning to something that looks safe doesn't have proper effect. People don't read warnings when everything comes with 100 warnings.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
People don't read warnings when everything comes with 100 warnings.
Very good point. Or they read them and laugh.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
Reminds me of a warning I saw on a treadmill recently. "Cease use immediately and consult a physician if you experience any of these symptoms: dizzyness, light headedness or shortness of breath."
On a treadmill? Really?!
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
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53% of slashdotters get shortness of breath looking at a treadmill.
Other 46.0% will get dizzy - the remaining 1% are in army service [slashdot.org] or are girls-in-training (with or without bra). /.-er.
None of them will get light-headed though: being predisposed to such symptoms runs counter to being a
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I always laugh at that too. If I actually achieve my goals of exercise then I should stop exercising?
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I have in my shopping bag a slice of fish labeled 'contains fish' and a yogurt labeled 'contains milk product.' I've also seen peanut butter with a 'contains nuts' warning, but not recently.
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It is, however, actually a good idea to warn when a jar of peanut butter might contain nuts, as peanuts are legumes, not tree nuts, and not all those allergic to nuts are allergic to peanuts.
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I have in my shopping bag a slice of fish labeled 'contains fish' and a yogurt labeled 'contains milk product.' I've also seen peanut butter with a 'contains nuts' warning, but not recently.
I agree that the above examples are stupid, but I am generally in favor of the allergy warnings. One of my kids was allergic to all dairy products for a while (he grew out of it, which is common), and it saved me from having to read every ingredient, and also having to remember some oddball ingredients that happen to be dairy.
Pop Quiz:
Which of the following ingredients are definitely or likely dairy, and which are not dairy?
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
Those seem stupid, but for at least two there's a reason: peanuts are legumes, and people can be allergic to either tree nuts or peanuts, or both; and yoghurts can be soy-based rather than dairy-based.
Soy based yoghurt? OH MY GOD, WHERE IS MY GUN?
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Did you miss that if you eat them all at once, they will stick together in one clump and therefore none would be in an "adjacent track of intestine". Although, I would think that just having a, effectively solid, chunk of indigestible material the size of several buckyballs may be a problem in of itself.
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Did you miss that if you eat them all at once, they will stick together in one clump and therefore none would be in an "adjacent track of intestine". Although, I would think that just having a, effectively solid, chunk of indigestible material the size of several buckyballs may be a problem in of itself.
Not if you test first [therevcounter.co.uk] like the monkey ;-)
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Kids swallow objects; that's nothing new. I'm sure that most people here swallowed a coin or a marble or a pen parts or other indigestibles much larger than a few buckyballs.
I swallowed a rod magnet myself as a kid. No problems.
The danger of the buckyballs is (apart from idiots who let kids they're responsible for play with dangerous objects unsupervised) pinching. Not blockage.
Anyhow, I feel this crusade against buckyballs is misplaced. No kids have died from them. None. And they're not sold as a chi
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If you swallow them close enough, they'll stick together without trapping tissue between them. 30 minutes is probably enough time, but may not be. An hour would almost certianly be enough time. But two separated by 5 minutes would likely not do anything.
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Re: Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
This doesn't appear to be the case. Look, for example at this reference [cdc.gov], where several magnets had stuck together and yet caused problems. These appear to have been larger than buckyballs, but the idea is that they can loop back and pinch the bowel even if they are stuck together.
Even a cursory glance at the literature is a bit scary. The problem is that MOST things that kids swallow are pretty harmless and therefore not brought to anyone's attention. We don't know the numbers of kids that swallow magnets yet have no problems - they certainly exist - so the reporting bias is going to be fairly high.
But I personally would keep kids away from these things. They just don't need to play with them just yet.
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As long as you have sufficient mineral oil and a folded towel to bite down on.
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"Gaaaaah hot hot hot hot. AAAAAh woooooaaaaaah"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0pdFXygoRY [youtube.com]
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're assuming that the reason for the warnings is to save lives...
It's actually purely to get themselves off the hook after lives are lost. Plausible deniability!
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That is true. Regulation ensures that we only have well-designed coffee makers. At least on the safety front. Regulation ensures tha
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You have that backwards. Bernie wasn't investigated because the regulators are weak. Such things do not happen in well-governed countries were regulators have not been castrated by Randroids.
Yeah, right. But then you are deranged and cr
Labelling (Score:4, Insightful)
When I was living in the US, I enjoyed showing my German friends labels from water bottles that listed 0% fat, with the comment: "Look, they sell fat-free water in the US, quite unlike all the fatty water that is being sold in Germany!" ;-)
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, the problem is that people are idiots, even smart people. On one of the previous /. discussions there were a surprising number of people who posted comments talking about how they'd swallowed all kinds of metal objects as kids, many of which were sharp, and swallowing something round like Buckyballs is no big deal - it's just the nanny state kicking up a fuss about nothing. They did this in response to an article which described, in fairly graphic detail, exactly why swallowing strong magnets was more dangerous than other small metal objects and the actual injuries that had resulted from it.
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And well it should. I fully support the labeling of products that contain dangerous and addictive additives like DHMO.
Indeed... DHMO consumption is highly correlated to almost every disease and sickness known to man.
Just about everyone who eventually gets sick or dies has consumed DHMO.
I'm afraid the warning alone might never be effective. A mandatory recall of DHMO containing products seems the only wise idea.
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Why does this even need a warning? If you're too stupid not to understand to either A) not ingest these, or B) not give them to someone not old enough to know better, then by all means, swallow them all, then go get an MRI.
I find the overreaction(compared to less esoteric flavors of consumer-unsafety) rather strange; but the mechanism of harm is not wildly intuitive.
If you ingest one, the consequences are essentially nil. The coatings(generally either nickel or some epoxy or polymer) are reasonably inert and not particularly dangerous, and even the magnets themselves(while not considered biocompatible) are not a serious oral toxicity concern.
If you ingest two or more, with a time lag between ingestions, they can potentially s
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It reminds me of http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/01/30/leigh-van-bryan-and-emily-bunting-banned-from-entering-us-after-twitter-joke-about-destroying-america_n_1241104.html/ [huffingtonpost.co.uk] where that whole country of gun-toting free-thinking individuals wouldn't have been safe from a couple of tourists from the
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
CPSC has received 54 reports of children and teens ingesting this product, with 53 of these requiring medical interventions.
Sounds like Darwinism in action. Young children, I can understand, but teens?
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, my boy, you clearly haven't been to an MRI scan before. Just try to go into the chamber with your glasses on, and see the reaction of the operator.
Nope, my boy, you clearly haven't been exposed to sarcasm before. Just try and go on Slashdot without it, and see the reaction of the intertubes.
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Not sure if oblivious poster with good intentions or a really, really good troll...
Anyways, I'm fairly certain that was exactly his point.
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"by all means, swallow them all, then go get an MRI"
No he meant MRI. He is mean :D
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really?! Now that wouldn't be very smart, would it?
Just like swallowing magnets in the first place.
I think he did mean MRI for exactly that reason :)
(My apologies for my sarcasm)
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An MRI is a really big superconducting magnet.
Well, to be accurate, not all of them are. SQUID-bases MRI imagers can operate with vastly weaker fields, I believe that some of them at least are using the natural magnetic background. I'm not sure, though, what the magnetic field of these magnets would do with tissue imaging results. You'd probably get complete garbage out of it.
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Whoosh much?
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You mean CAT scan?
An MRI is a really big superconducting magnet. If you swallowed some of those balls, had them get stuck in your intestines, then went for an MRI... I can't imagine that would be a very pleasant experience, having several balls forcibly pulled through your soft squishy organs.
That was the joke, i.e. "eat them and go die".
Yay, we can stop this pernicious danger! (Score:5, Insightful)
But if it's guns, well, we can't even suggest that background checks should be implemented or the NRA will unleash a titanic fury of political money to get what they want.
Re:Yay, we can stop this pernicious danger! (Score:5, Insightful)
Relax. We're laughing that "think of the children" claimed your toys, too.
Re:Yay, we can stop this pernicious danger! (Score:5, Funny)
When I was younger we would take the lawn darts out back into the yard at night. We'd throw them straight up and then run around underneath them hoping that we'd not die. Amazingly, nobody died or was ever hurt from that game and I'm not sure how we managed to be that stupid and that lucky. Either way we were really stupid but we had a lot of fun. They need to bring Jarts back and they need to specifically prohibit me and my childhood friends from playing with them. Again, we were really lucky and really stupid. We all survived to adulthood - most of us are quite successful today.
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Actually you got your wish. Jarts are banned.
"Lawn Darts Are Banned and Should Be Destroyed". U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. 1997-05-15. Retrieved 2011-01-25. "Pointed lawn darts, intended for use in an outdoor game, have been responsible for the deaths of three children. The most recent injury occurred last week in Elkhart, Ind., when a 7-year-old boy suffered a brain injury after a lawn dart pierced his skull."
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And this, folks, is what happens when you're struck in the head with a lawn dart.
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9th amendment covers it pretty solidly if you ask me. They didn't mention them, therefore the government wasn't granted any power over them. Government power is supposed to be explicitly granted not assumed and then limited later.
But hey, everything, including growing your own crops rather than buying them, is interstate commerce now [wikipedia.org]. If someone starts selling air in a can, they might have the authority to regulate your breathing the way things have been going
And people say this place has only been going in
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I think you got this backwards. This is just as fucking stupid as current proposed gun laws.
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all he wanted to do was stop his sister from being harassed by that kid.
That escalated quickly. Well, it worked, but many times I wonder if these kids are so stupid to not realize what they're doing, or fully understand that they will be ending someone's life. Either way, they should be removed from society forever because something if fundamentally wrong with them.
ffs (Score:5, Insightful)
death to children and teenagers. (Score:5, Funny)
children, maybe teenagers?
come on thats not saftey that Darwin, if your teenager is eating magnets then wtf are they going to do with a car, or the right to vote OMFG
Re: death to children and teenagers. (Score:5, Interesting)
The situation that I heard about was teenagers (presumably at the lower end of that age range) accidentally ingesting them from putting them on their lips, tongue or teeth in trying to simulate piercings & jewelry.
It's still absolutely retarded that the CPSC is so bent on banning these things. I think the extent of their influence is getting them off retail store shelves, not outlawing their sale completely.
"At least" they've only gone after Buckyballs, not the other manufacturers. I bought mine from NeoCube [theneocube.com], as they're by far the cheapest for their large combo set. Buckyballs are expensive. As NeoCube and others (like Zen Magnets) generally only sell online, I'm not sure if they're in the CPSC's reach.
Re: death to children and teenagers. (Score:5, Informative)
"At least" they've only gone after Buckyballs, not the other manufacturers. I bought mine from NeoCube, as they're by far the cheapest for their large combo set. Buckyballs are expensive. As NeoCube and others (like Zen Magnets) generally only sell online, I'm not sure if they're in the CPSC's reach.
There's a banner on Neocube's website now that says :
THESE PRODUCTS ARE NOT FOR CHILDREN UNDER 14!! Please Read All Warnings
NOT FOR SALE INSIDE THE U.S.
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The best warning is "This product contains small balls.".
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...common sense went out the window with this generation of uber-morons.
No, common-sense went out the window with this (and the previous) generation of judges. You know, the ones who award millions in damages for trivial foolishness that the subject was too stupid to avoid, and deny proper damages in cases of genuine suffering because some company paid them to look the other way.
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children, maybe teenagers?
come on thats not saftey that Darwin, if your teenager is eating magnets then wtf are they going to do with a car, or the right to vote OMFG
Drive pickups and vote republican?
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if your teenager is eating magnets then wtf are they going to do with a car, ...
drive it while sexting.
...or the right to vote OMFG
Well, that one is easy... they'll swallow it too and they'll also become sick because of it.
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Ah, ignorant liberals who use words like Murricans - don't understand that the government's job is to take any role granted to it by its citizens and then do it in the most ludicrously inefficient and inept way possible. Big Government doesn't work, not in a country of real scale in terms of population, resources, and economy. It doesn't matter what political flavor that government is.
This really is a basic engineering problem, not a political one. Think scaling servers for a large online service, or sca
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oh I knew in the back of my head there was going to be a bleeding heart that took "teenagers" as in all teenagers and narrow it down to their specific range of teenagers
yes all teenagers in the world are affected by autism, Down syndrome, Ceberal Palsey, Rett syndrome, and Martin Bell syndrome at the same time, therefore we should ban these dangerous magnets, while we are at it forks
jesus
Goodbye Buckyballs (Score:2)
Nice to see that Maxfield & Oberton were willing to brave it out and stick up for themselves and our rights to own Buckyballs! Let's go see if they have any reaction to the news on their homepage [getbuckyballs.com].
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Way to stick it to the man!? Now where do we get awesome magnets... - HEX
Right here [theneocube.com]
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Incredibly stupid (Score:5, Informative)
There was a big hoo-ha in Australia about 6mo ago where a 12 year old kid swallowed a bunch of them that were sitting on a high shelf in his father's locked study. So the kid, who is 12 and should have known better, went into his fathers office, climbed up the shelf, pulled down metal balls and proceeded to eat them. The mother went on to campaign for them to be pulled from Australian stores, which they were 4 months later.
Now the infuriating thing about this is that because of one *incredibly* stupid kid everybody doesn't get some awesome toys. My 26 year old brother in law is pretty annoyed because he spends a lot of his free time tinkering with big blocks of them and now he can't get anymore. These are not children's toys and it is foolish to ban them entirely because some dumbass kid was stupid. By that logic you'd have to ban every adult product on the logic that it was not safe for children
Re:Incredibly stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
So the kid, who is 12 and should have known better, went into his fathers office, climbed up the shelf, pulled down metal balls and proceeded to eat them.
The kid didn't just ate them for the fun of it, it swallowed them accidentally while pretending to have a pierced tongue. You might still call that stupid, but that's well in the realm of normal child stupidity (I for one prefer to call that creativity).
These are not children's toys
It's looks like a toy, it plays like a toy and is fun like a toy. The very problem with them is that it is not obvious how dangerous those things can be.
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Never has been more relevant [theonion.com]
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A growing problem (Score:5, Informative)
The risk for teenagers comes from attempts to use magnets to simulate piercings. [lww.com]
See "Magnet Ingestions in Children Presenting to United States Emergency Departments from 2002 to 2011." [nih.gov] "A national estimate of 16,386 (95% CI: 12,175-20,598) children The incidence of visits increased 8.5-fold (0.45 per 100,000 to 3.75 per 100,000) from 2002 to 2011 with a 75% average annual increase per year. The majority of patients reported to have ingested magnets were under 5 years (54.7%). From 2009-2011 there was an increase in older children ingesting multiple small and/or round magnets, with a mean average age of 7.1+-0.56 years over the study period. "
Re:A growing problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Smoking is a problem. Motor vehicle accidents are a problem. Guns related deaths (some say it isn't) are a problem.
A product that has sold 2.2million sets resulting in 33 surgical procedures and 1 death since 2010 is NOT a problem.
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Could you please supply the exact number of children's deaths over a 3 year period that you believe would justify banning the product. Thanks.
Re:A growing problem (Score:5, Informative)
For perspective, on average 25 kids die every year from plastic bags [livestrong.com]. On average, 350,000 kids require emergency room care and 200 kids die every year from bicycle accidents [livestrong.com], and that's a toy designed for use by kids. I can't give you an exact number, but it should certainly be several orders of magnitude greater than the number of kids injured or killed by Buckyballs.
Either that or ban all bicycles and plastic bags, including garbage bags.
Re:A growing problem (Score:4, Insightful)
No. But it's damn well higher than one. As a quick guide think of the things we as a society take for granted and then consider how many people get killed by it each year.
But then it's not a case of absolutes either. The primary purpose of buckyballs is not to be eaten. As such a child related death due to ingestion is simple bad supervision by parents. Accidental deaths are attributed to all manner of products used improperly. A teenager got killed opening a computer powersupply, does that mean we should ban all computers? On the other hand a safety device like a seatbelt pretensioner failing and causing one death over a three year period is cause for alarm as the device failed to perform it's primary purpose.
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One gun related death for every 8000 guns in circulation. Doesn't matter where you are or what the gun laws of that country are. Std deviation on that stat is in the 500-700 range, btw, which is pretty small.
Wait, just so I understand. (Score:3)
I may not buy magnets because some parents are stupid enough to give high power magnets to kids?
That's messing with nature, weeding out those too stupid to breed and take care of their offspring. Sorry, but if you're stupid enough to think extra powerful magnets are something that belongs in your kids hands, your genes should go down the tubes.
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afaik these don't ban magnets themselves. just packing them in a toy like box and being available at your toystore!
In releted news ... (Score:5, Funny)
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I may not buy magnets because some parents are stupid enough to give high power magnets to kids?
RTFA. The recall is for a particular type of magnetic toy, not "high power magnets" per se. Its one thing to sell potentially dangerous items - its another thing to package them as toys [gajitz.com]*.
Also - as someone has pointed out elsewhere - there is a particular problem with older kids using these to make fake tongue piercings - so its not just parents giving them to babies and toddlers who will swallow anything.
Plus - this threat isn't immediately obvious. There have been magnetic toys since the year dot - but n
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Reminds me of my chemistry book. I guess quoting the more interesting parts might already be illegal itself in this time and age, but allow me to quote this gem: "If the mixture turns pink, an explosion cannot be avoided".
Period. Next chapter.
Really lovely.
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Would you be willing check, every time, that every single magnet went back in the case even if it took you several days to find the ones that went missing? Because if not, there's a good chance that you'd be a danger to kids if you got your hands on a set of these magnets - even if you don't have kids of your own, it just takes a visiting kid finding a couple and eating them, or them getting trapped in the tread of your shoe and deposited somewhere where kids could eat them, or... They don't look obviously
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If you have kids, it might be a good idea to NOT get those things exactly because they're a hazard to kids and it's easy to drop a bead.
What happened to responsibility? Seriously, are we so used to being enclosed in bubblewrap that we instantly think nothing we have could possibly be dangerous when handled carelessly?
Young kids are not allowed in my home for various reasons, and none of them being that I'm afraid they could make a mess. I do a lot of Microcontroller work, that includes not only tiny bits of
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Well, you have to admit that there is a nonzero chance that careless handling of guns may cause damage to others. It's a bit like drunk driving, I wouldn't mind it at all if someone is stupid enough to get behind a wheel when his judgement and reaction sense are impaired beyond any sense, if if wasn't for that chance that he doesn't just off himself and do the world a favor but also harm someone in the process. Same deal with volatile chemicals, even though I'll suffer from it either way if our lawmakers ha
Warning (Score:4, Funny)
In news tonight the CPSC have called for more warning labels on things that could potentially in rare cases cause death or hospitalisation. This follows the single reported death due to ingestion of bucky balls, a popular product designed exclusively to kill babies. One Californian senator however says the CPSC is dragging its feet and has a long way to go to protect Americans. He has repeatedly criticized the CPSC over its lack of interest and regulation of gun sales urging both the department and retailers to place signs on all ammunition saying "Warning: May contain lead".
Over my dead body (Score:5, Funny)
You can have my BuckyBalls when you pry them from my cold dead fingers!
Re:Over my dead body (Score:5, Funny)
You can take my Buckballs when you dig them out of my cold, rotting intestines. ;o)
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Swallow one, wait three hours, swallow another, wait for four days to a month and we can do that :)
Sheesh, it says VOLUNTARY!
No. (Score:2)
Not only will I not submit my sets for recall, I intend to buy more than the 6 sets I already have. If you're so fucking stupid that eat magnets, that's not my problem. And likewise, if you're too stupid to educate or protect your children, that's not my problem either.
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SC is working on a Law (Score:2, Interesting)
South Carolina has introduced state legislation that would make possession or sale of spherical magnets smaller than 1 inch in diameter a Class C Felony punishable by up to 5 years in prison, and limits the sale or possession of ALL magnets that are "just magnets" to industrial and commercial use only. For residential use, under the new legislation, all magnets must be part of an assembly that cannot be ingested, and the magnets cannot be removable from the product.
Idiocracy. For the children.
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I call bullshit - citation or it didn't happen. Troll is obvious.
Now this. (Score:2)
Local quarry to recall gravel because of swallowing hazard.
This is so stupid (Score:2)
It's really a gauss rifle ammo ban. (Score:3)
Look, you can't have people with unsupervised mass accelerators that can fire a bucky ball through the moon, just out firing willynilly about the landscape. It's down right rude, man! Think about it! Nor can you expound upon the issue in public, lest you arouse the leviathan of curiosity, "gauss rifle...wtf is that?" And there we are, with yet another 2nd Amendment crisis on our hands. By the way, I think bullets are a choking hazard as well.
There are some people who are dangerous with a sharp stick in their hand, right? Qualifications is all I'm saying.
54 victims in how many years? (Score:3)
And only 53 of them required "medical intervention". This is an absolute non-risk. Only credible explanation for this "alert": Some bureaucrats want more importance and are willing to create a lot of fear to get it. That is terrorism at its best. Sadly, these despicable cretins will get away with it as being afraid is now so deeply ingrained in US culture that people probably would not feel right without it.
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My teenage boys enjoy them and so do I
I take this to mean that there are at least three of you.
So far still count in base 10 and 2 working eyes.
Two working eyes... You should have at least six of those. O nocuous magnets!
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Dude! Be careful with those parenting skills. Parents have been being arrested and their local police departments are trying to get their children taken away from them for doing such dangerous things to children as teaching them to be responsible, and letting them demonstrate those skills. It's a dangerous world out there for parents these days.
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So THAT's how Magneto started!