Parents are warned about the toy Magnetix

[Guest guest]

My son loves these things, but, gotta be very careful:

By TOM PAULSON

P-I REPORTER

Parents should keep away from young children a popular toy called

Magnetix, a play set of magnetized building blocks, local public

health officials and pediatricians warned Thursday.

" The problem is loose magnets, " said Dr. Haruff, the King

County medical examiner. The coroner discovered during autopsy last

year how two tiny magnets that had come from Magnetix pieces had

punctured and " tied up in loops " the intestine of a 22-month-old

boy, Sweet, leading to the boy's death by systemic infection.

Last week, according to officials at Children's Hospital and

Regional Medical Center, a 5-year-old boy was admitted for emergency

surgery to remove what turned out to be more ingested Magnetix

magnets.

" He was close to dying, " said Dr. Ledbetter, the lead surgeon

in the case.

Because of these two cases, Haruff and Ledbetter held a news

conference Thursday at Children's to issue a safety warning urging

parents to keep Magnetix toys away from young children. While public-

health officials routinely issue safety warnings, it is unusual for

an agency to single out a particular product.

The family of Sweet filed a lawsuit earlier this week

against the manufacturer of the toy, RoseArt Inc., seeking to stop

its manufacture and distribution.

The president of RoseArt has expressed his condolences but asserted

that the product was safe.

A representative for the Sweets said they filed a complaint last

year with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission but grew

frustrated at the lack of action. Haruff and Ledbetter said they

have made their concerns known to the federal agency as well.

The 5-year-old now at Children's, who was not identified or

described further at the request of his parents, came in with

abdominal pain and a fever, Ledbetter said. Such symptoms are fairly

common, he noted, but X-rays identified a small metal object.

Surgery revealed that the tiny, powerful metal magnets had found

each other in the boy's abdomen and come together. This, Ledbetter

said, led to ulceration and holes in the intestine, which caused

sepsis as intestinal bacteria leaked out into the blood and abdomen.

The boy will remain in the hospital for the next week or so, he

said, but is expected to fully recover.

Haruff and Ledbetter said they were prompted to issue the safety

warning because Magnetix is such a popular toy. Both said they had

seen few such cases and believed them to be rare.

The Sweet family, however, believes other cases have been

misdiagnosed, because the cause of 's death was not known

until after an autopsy was performed. Their representative cited a

November 2004 report in the journal Radiology, written by Dr. Alan

Oestreich of the Cincinnati Children's Hospital, in which the

physician warns of this risk.

" All radiologists should be on the alert, " Oestreich wrote.

P-I reporter Tom son can be reached at 206-448-8318 or

tompaulson@....