Florida toddler hospitalized after swallowing 16 magnets from toy his brother brought home

When Hannah Arrington and her husband took their two-year-old son, the youngest of five, to the emergency room for abdominal pain, they did not expect an X-ray to discover that he had ingested tiny magnetic balls. Aware of the possible dangers, they don’t typically buy toys like those for their children, she said, so the news was initially a shock.

“All of a sudden it clicked, and I remembered,” Arrington said.

In April, her older son came home from school with Buckyballs, she said, which he had gotten from a classmate.

The pieces of the toy had been separated and scattered around the house. Unknown to his parents, Konin would find a magnet, pick it up and put it in his mouth. He swallowed 16 of them.

The magnets reattached and perforated a hole in his stomach down to his colon.

Surgeons had to remove about three feet of Konin’s small intestine, his mom said, and he was sent home for recovery. But after losing significant weight, he was admitted back into the hospital where he was diagnosed with small bowel syndrome.

She said her husband also asked the school’s vice principal to alert the staff to pay more attention to kids bringing things to school that “could potentially kill another child.”

“Clearly just asking your kid how their day was isn’t enough,” Arrington said. “Parents need to triple check what their kids are bringing home from school.”

In 2014, the CPSC recalled Buckyballs, among other similar magnetic toys, but the ruling was overturned in 2016, giving buyers access to them again.

“These magnet balls used to be banned,” Arrington said. “I don’t know why a federal judge would ever think to overturn something that has killed multiple children.”

Also upsetting, Arrington said, is seeing trends of a TikTok challenge where kids and teenagers are putting similar magnets in their mouths.

In the viral challenge, people put two magnetic balls on both sides of their tongue or in their nose to give the appearance of a piercing. The challenge has already proved dangerous in England, as the NHS reported an uptick in older children being admitted to the hospital because of the trend, according to Sky News.

A warning label on the product says to keep the product away from children and that people should avoid putting them in their nose or mouth. It also says that any swallowed magnets can stick to intestines and result in serious injury or death.

Even so, Buckyballs have landed in the news for exactly that. In 2017, after the product was allowed back on the market, a toddler in Colorado was also hospitalized for swallowing 28 Buckyball magnets.

As Arrington sits beside her toddler son, now on a feeding tube in the hospital, she has one message to parents: be vigilant.

“We just want other parents to know because we had no idea that something like that could cause that much damage,” Arrington said. “Parents need to know that you need to be double checking where your kids are bringing home from school and getting from other people.”

The family has created a GoFundMe to raise money to cover Konin’s medical bills.

This story was originally published June 17, 2021 at 12:00 AM.