Posted on 10/25/2025 7:39:30 PM PDT by Red Badger
(TNND) — A New Zealand boy who swallowed up to 100 high-powered magnets underwent surgery to remove them from his gut.
The 13-year-old was admitted to Tauranga Hospital on New Zealand's North Island.
Doctors realized the magnets joined together to form chains in his insides. X-rays showed four different chains of magnets in sections of his insides, cutting off blood flow to nearby tissue.
According to a report by doctors at the hospital, published Friday in the New Zealand Medical Journal, surgeons removed “approximately 80–100 5x2mm high-power neodymium magnets."
The boy, who was not identified in the report, spent 8 days in the hospital.
However, the surgeons warned that the boy may face long-term complications, such as bowel obstructions, hernias, or chronic abdominal pain.
Although New Zealand banned the selling of small high-powered magnets in 2013, the report said the boy got his hands on the magnet through the online shop Temu. The country banned the magnets due to swallowing cases.
“These magnets are harmless to play with but if swallowed can cause serious internal damage that can require major surgery,” said Simon Bridges in a written statement, then New Zealand’s consumer affairs minister, at the time of the ban.
When the ban was put in place, New Zealand noted it would be difficult to get rid of magnets from online sources.
"Despite the ban small high-power magnets continue to be sold. The Commerce Commission has taken at least two retailers to court for selling the magnets and therefore breaching the Notice," said Professor Alex Sims, Department of Commercial Law, School of Business, University of Auckland, in a written statement.
In a statement to NBC News, Temu said it has not yet been able to confirm whether the magnets in question were purchased through its platform.
“We are sorry to learn about the reported incident and wish the boy a full and speedy recovery,” Temu’s spokesperson told NBC.
Not unless he was trying to start one himself................
He wanted to be a babe magnet?
I say the more stupidly dangerous TikTok challenges the better, to weed out the idiots. Let them try the Cross the Freeway Blindfolded During Rush Hour challenge, or the Fistful of Fentanyl challenge, etc.
You could swallow one and get away with it as long as there isn’t something ferrous inside you already. You could swallow two of them if you swallow them together because they will stick together and become one bigger magnet. Did you know that every Chromebook has one in the front bezel of the screen? I worked on Chromebooks quite a bit over several years and ended up with about a thousand of them. They are very small but if kids knew they were there it would be a huge problem. They are how the Chromebooks know the lid is shut. Our schools have as many as three Chromebooks for every student because they break down so easily and often that some kids go through several each year. Then they go obsolete after 5 years.
Suicide attempt or dare?
That all sounds about right. I worked in Radiology Informatics, and we had little lights that came with each high end microphones that the radiologists used that would light up when they had their record button pressed.
It was supposed to alert someone not to interrupt a radiologist dictating the result of some exam when the light was on, kind of like a studio light in a recording studio.
On the bottom of the lights was a very powerful magnet so you could attach the light securely to nearly anything that had even a little ferrous material in it.
We installed them, but people thought they were dumb and added to the wiring tangles, so we removed them. Before we threw them out, I pried all the magnets off the bottoms of them to keep, and they were pretty powerful.
I got my finger caught between two of them, and they gave me a blood blister!
He felt a strange attraction for toasters...
,,, good question - Tauranga's not a bad place to be.
I would imagine the toaster found him. Quickly.
Well, that was stupid.
They used to be sold as ‘bucky balls’, sets of little round magnets that were very fun to play with. The problem with them was that children were constantly swallowing the damn things causing serious health issues. They were banned in the US because of it. To this day I wish I could buy some because they were so dang cool. We have no small children where I live to worry about swallowing them.
He wasn’t going to tell his mother, but she was unable to pull him off the refrigerator door.
Swallowing more than one of these magnets is very dangerous. Please swallow only one.
That, or he wanted to feel closer to the refrigerator...
What happened to the “olden days” when kids just stuck a green pea up their nose?
BECAUSE THEY ARE 13......
Democrats want kids his age CHOOSING THEIR GENDER.
Did his mom stick him to the fridge?
“Unless this boy was autistic or retarded, why would any 13 year old swallow a hundred magnets?....................”
To attract girls.
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