The Pursuit of Safety
The Magnet Safety Organization a 501c(3) nonprofit, which exists to promote the safe usage of high powered magnets among consumers and educators, through research, public outreach, and content creation.
We believe that magnet safety is an important goal, while also recognizing that benefits of magnets.
Current Efforts
2022 CPSC Magnet Ban Summary
Our Position – MagnetSafety.org
Current Efforts
From the alarming recent rise in high power magnet injuries, action is needed more than ever. The path to the sustainable magnet safety is to effectively educate consumers, not an unpopular nonconsensual ban on recreational magnets for adults. Thus our current efforts are aimed at:
- Overturning the 2022 CPSC Recreational Magnet Ban, which enacts a non-consensual nation-wide prohibition of high powered recreational magnet sets, even to informed adults without children.
- Pushing the CPSC to adopt and enforce ASTM-F3458-21, a reasonable standard for high powered magnet sets, which requires recreational high powered magnet sets for adults to have child resistant packaging on par with the pharmaceuticals, and warnings more severe in language and design than cigarettes and fireworks combined.
2022 CPSC Magnet Ban Summary
The US Government is attempting to ban recreational magnets, even for adults.
Specifically, the 2022 Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) “Safety Standard” for Magnets (CPSC-2021-0037) will ban nearly all small high-power magnets except for “research and educational products, or those intended for commercial or industrial purposes, if they are not also intended for amusement or jewelry.”[Link] As it’s currently written, even if the magnets are for education or industrial use, they are prohibited if CPSC determines amusement is involved.
This isn’t the first time the CPSC has attempted to ban magnets. In 2015 the CPSC enacted a similar ban on high-power recreational magnets. The ban was overturned in 2016, as 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined the ban was inadequately supported, and did not sufficiently consider the alternatives.
- ASTM-F3458-21 Presents a reasonable alternative that is likely to be adequate based on comparative hazards, as long as it is adopted and enforced by the CPSC. It allows for reasonable regulation of high powered magnet sets, without a nation-wide non-consensual prohibition. There’s nothing unlearnable about the hazards of high-power magnet spheres.
- The recent rise of magnet ingestion correlates more strongly to CPSC enforcement activities than effect of a ban.
- Similar to the 2015 Ban, the 2022 has the same NEISS injury analysis shortcomings, and makes no attempt to use injuries prior to 2009 SREMs as control data.
- Unlike the 2015 Ban, the required cost-benefit analysis in the 2022 Magnet Ban rule has no reliable sales, as domestic sales have nearly all been pushed overseas.
- Compared to 2015, a ban would not necessarily CPSC’s enforcement toolbox, as domestic suppliers have been extinguished. E.g, Buckyballs are illegal to sell, yet are still available in their original form from overseas sellers. [Example: 1, 2, 3]
- The Cost Benefit Analysis does not support the conclusion that a ban is necessary. Even if the benefit was supported by reliable data (it’s not), there are many economic options of ensuring that economic benefit exceeds the cost, such as: Magnet set size minimums that increase the price floor, product specific taxes, and import duties.
Our Position – MagnetSafety.org
The Magnet Safety Organization rulemaking comment for Docket No. CPSC-2021-0037 available here: