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Federal product safety regulators took rare legal action last week to remove tiny magnets called Buckyballs® and Buckycubes™ from the market after the maker failed to recall the products.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) announced the agency has filed an administrative complaint against Maxfield & Oberton Holdings LLC, importer and distributor of Buckyballs and Buckycubes high-powered magnet sets, claiming the products create a substantial risk of injury to the public. More than two dozen children and teenagers have suffered internal injuries that required surgical intervention after swallowing more than one of the tiny magnets, which snapped together inside their gastrointestinal track.

These products contain small, high-powered magnets. Because the magnet sets contain as many as 216 magnets, it may be difficult to determine if any are missing. Toddlers have found loose magnets and placed them in their mouths. Other children swallowed them after using them to mimic lip, tongue or cheek piercings.

When a person swallows two or more magnets, the magnetic force pulls the magnets together even through the stomach and intestinal walls. This can result in long-term health consequences, including inflammation and ulceration, progressing to tissue death, then perforation or fistula formation. These conditions can lead to infection, sepsis and death. Diagnosis and prompt treatment of these conditions may not occur if parents or doctors do not know the child ingested magnets.

“Children who undergo surgery to remove multiple magnets from their gastrointestinal tract are also at risk for long-term health consequences, including intestinal scarring, nutritional deficiencies due to loss of portions of the bowel, and possible fertility issues for women,” the administrative complaint said.

The company originally marketed the magnets by comparing their appeal to other children’s products such as erector sets and silly putty and then later rebranded the products as an adult executive desk toy and stress reliever.

In March 2010, the CPSC sent notification to Maxfield and Oberton Holdings that Buckyballs, labeled for ages 13+, failed to comply with the requirement for products sold to children younger than 14. The company issued a recall in May 2010 of about 175,000 magnet sets and changed the labeling to say ages 14+.

Despite the labeling change and a campaign by the CPSC and Maxfield and Oberton Holdings that the products are intended for adult use only, reports of ingestion and injury in children related to the products continue.

The CPSC says the warnings on the packaging are ineffective.

Maxfield and Oberton Holdings contend that there is nothing wrong with their product.

“You might have heard there’s a problem with our products… THAT IS NOT TRUE,” the Buckyballs website says.

"We are deeply disappointed that the CPSC has decided to go after our firm – and magnets in general. Magnets have been around for centuries and are used for all sorts of purposes,” said Craig Zucker, Founder and CEO of New York, NY based Maxfield and Oberton Holdings in a release. “Our products are marketed to those 14 and above and out of over half a billion magnets in the market place CPSC has received reports of less than two-dozen cases of misuse. We worked with the Commission in order to do an education video less than 9 months ago, so we are shocked they are taking this action. Obviously the bureaucrats see danger everywhere, and those responsible people – like our company who have vigorously promoted safety and appropriate use of our products – gets put out of business by an unfair and arbitrary process. I don't understand how and why they did this without following their own rules before allowing us to make our case. It almost seems like they simply wanted to put our products and industry out of business."

However, the CPSC says it “filed the administrative complaint against Maxfield & Oberton after discussions with the company and its representatives failed to result in a voluntary recall plan that CPSC staff considered to be adequate.”

This is only the 2nd time in eleven years the agency has filed an administrative complaint against a business.

At the request of the CPSC, some retailers such as Ebay have already voluntarily stopped selling Buckyballs, Buckycubes, and similar products.

More than 2 million Buckyballs sets and 200,000 Buckycubes sets have been sold in the United States. The company recently introduced another product called Buckybars ™ that is a combination of tiny bars and balls.

7 Comments

  1. Gravatar for Mark
    Mark

    It is not the company's responsibility if parents allow their children to play with them. If the child ends up swallowing it, it is the parents fault and not the company's. Warning labels are in place. It's also called common sense and taking instead of passing responsibility. Leave 'em alone!

  2. Gravatar for c
    c

    Just another incident of government bullying. Why aren't the parents responsible for watching their kids? I suppose the world is suppose to be made child-safe, so the parents can ignore their kids.

  3. Gravatar for Craig
    Craig

    If stupid people do stupid things with objects, or let their kids do stupid things with objects, then perhaps they are helping to clean up the increasingly murky gene pool.

  4. Gravatar for Chris
    Chris

    The Consumer Products Safety Commission - fighting natural selection one product at a time.

  5. Gravatar for Kara
    Kara

    omg - there's probably a 100 things that have "injured dozens" or the use of them has injured dozens -- they're still around; knives, guns, pills, cleaning products, cars, water, airplanes, electricity yea, I'll stop now (although you know I could go on and on. and on. Keep dangerous things out of reach of those who can be hurt by them, for crying out loud, and take some responsibility for having a brain and some forethought - or LACK of. I think Buckyballs are absolutely fun to play with. I am so sick of everyone whining about everything. God forbid they would say, "oh, I guess I should have educated myself about the dangers of this properly labeled product and been the slightest bit honorable and acknowledged it was MY fault." - a bunch of chickenshits these days being careless and then blaming the product. It's a THING - the grown up has (had) the brain.

  6. Gravatar for Tim
    Tim

    What a crock!!! I agree with Kara, there are way more things in the world that do harm to children than Buckyballs.

    Freekin government crap!!!

  7. Gravatar for Therese
    Therese

    In addition to the coins minted by the government which caused over 300,000 trips to the ER, the government runs the national parks and still allows bears, deer, and even rattlesnakes to run free in places that park visitors go. Plus way more than two dozen people have been injured or killed in climbing Half Dome and Mt. Whitney. What's with that?

    And, as my 91-year old mother just commented, they want to ban Buckyballs and these are the same people who continue to subsidize the tobacco industry and want to legalize marijuana and drugs. It's crazy.

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