
Zen Magnets: 6 Years of Battle End in Victory - beefman
https://zenmagnets.com/public-releases/6-2018-6-years-of-battle-ends-in-victory/
======
tptacek
I 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.

~~~
brusch64
Can 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/)

~~~
friendzis
Gloves are not inherently bad, but the risks they do not protect from are not
obvious. For the sake of this comment room temperature is 0 heat, cold is
negative heat (offset scale).

Gloves are not a perfect insulator, therefore they absorb heat and cold. It
takes time for the cold to permeate the gloves - i.e. you observe significant
temperature gradient over thickness of the glove. By the time your hand feels
the cold, the whole width of the glove is bloody cold. In order to remove the
cold from the glove you need to heat it. The only heat source is your hand
inside of the glove, therefore the heat is taken from your hand. You need as
much heat from your hand as much cold you have taken from LN to bring the
gloves to 0. Unless you remove the gloves when the cold starts to permeate -
hello frostbite.

While Leidenfrost effect allows one to splash LN on their hands without any or
at least significant damage, gloves simply allow more splashes, not full
immersion. Handling LN with gloves is a delaying technique, gloves do not
magically protect from cold.

~~~
dreamcompiler
It's sort of similar with very hot things. I'm a blacksmith, and I rarely wear
gloves. Steel is a poor conductor of heat, so if you grab it just a few inches
away from the red-hot end you're fine. If you hold it too close, you realize
it instantly and let go before any serious damage happens. But if you wear
cotton gloves for a while, you'll grab the steel closer to the heat without
realizing how hot it is, and then the accumulated sweat inside the glove
suddenly vaporizes, and you get a nasty steam burn before you can get the
glove off.

~~~
samfriedman
Similar thing working in a kitchen: always grab things out of the oven with a
dry towel. Use a wet towel once and you'll never make that mistake again: the
steam exploding against your skin will hurt you a lot more than the metal on
your bare skin would have.

------
flashman
People 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-
da...](http://mentalfloss.com/article/31176/how-one-dad-got-lawn-darts-banned)

~~~
romwell
>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]

Several points:

1\. _Suspected_ magnet ingestion =/= magnet ingestion. I believe we should
stop here, however:

2\. _Of course_ a total ban on sales (which was in effect for some time) would
decrease this number, but

3\. So would improved packaging and public education campaigns on the
potential dangers of the product, which were _happening at the same time_ ,
and

4\. If you actually read the paper, they observe that the reduction in the
_suspected_ ingestion cases was not _that_ large: from 8,326 to 6,260. Perhaps
you should include that in your cost function.

5\. Also from the paper: 86% of the kids were "treated and released from the
ED or examined and released without treatment"

To put the nail in the _suspected_ coffin, one should go and read the article
you referenced: [SciHub link][1]:

>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.

Meanwhile, a _million_ kids ended up in emergency rooms from trampoline-
related injuries over a decade[2], and no one bats an eye.

[1][http://sci-hub.nu/10.1097/MPG.0000000000001830](http://sci-
hub.nu/10.1097/MPG.0000000000001830)

[2][https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/7-terrifying-statistics-
tramp...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/7-terrifying-statistics-trampoline-
safety-everett-sanderson/)

~~~
monochromatic
> the cost of being able to have these magnets on your desk is probably dozens
> or hundreds of kids getting very sick

No, that's the cost of _everyone_ being able to have these magnets on their
desk. The pro rata cost of _me_ being able to have them is quite small.

~~~
jenkstom
That is the marginal cost, which generally tends to zero. It's not a very
effective argument in this case.

~~~
monochromatic
marginal != pro rata

------
rjbwork
Good 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.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
> 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.

~~~
natosaichek
When I ordered a set of magnets, it did come with a bright warning
([https://images1.westword.com/imager/one-of-the-warning-
label...](https://images1.westword.com/imager/one-of-the-warning-labels-that-
comes-with/u/original/6527906/feature_warning.jpg))

~~~
tomatotomato37
That'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

~~~
mcphage
IF YOU EAT THIS YOU WILL DIE, AND IT WILL HURT THE ENTIRE TIME YOU ARE DYING.

~~~
justin66
That sort of warning is more effective if it's not mixed in with a joke.

------
cantrevealname
> _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)

------
foobar1962
From 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
The 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
The magnets were never banned from industrial use and sale.

------
ddtaylor
So 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?

~~~
jonhendry18
How much of a company does it really require to order magnets and packaging on
alibaba?

~~~
ddtaylor
How 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?

------
Digit-Al
America is insane. Probably the only country that will argue _for_ banning
magnets and _against_ banning handguns.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Yeah, 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".

------
maym86
Weird how it is that we can ban magnets but not guns.

------
Reason077
I'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
When 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.

------
pvaldes
Couldn'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?

------
newman8r
I 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.

------
isrsal
This 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
I'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
He specifically swallowed “Bucky balls”, which are small yet powerful magnets.

~~~
tropdrop
So 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
The 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.

------
iamgopal
Is liquid nitrogen a waste by product of generating the oxygen ? Can it be
used for cooling ?

------
theshadeslayer
Legit confused this with Zenpencils.

------
damm
the 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
I think you are confusing the CFPB and the CPSC

~~~
jonhendry18
Trump'll kill the CPSC eventually.

