AFAIK this is still hypothetical: there is no confirmed case of this ever happening. Not to say that there's no risk, just that it's evidently a small one.
That's 11 injuries and 0.3 deaths per year. Bathtubs claim about 80 fatal and 100 non-fatal drownings per year.
Judging from this data, assuming the risk stays the same over time, you have to play with magnets for roughly about 1000 years for your risk to be one micromort[1]. Same one micromort risk is assumed by drinking two glasses of wine or walking for 17 miles. Playing with a magnet for a year is as dangerous as eating a banana (bananas are radioactive).
> That's 11 injuries and 0.3 deaths per year. Bathtubs claim about 80 fatal and 100 non-fatal drownings per year.
I'm not a stats guy, but it seems like this comparison would be more useful if we somehow account for the difference between the number of bathtubs installed and the number of neodymium magnet toys purchased among the population.
You can go both ways on this. If something were purchased by almost nobody, why ban it? OTOH, if something is purchased by almost everybody, and hurts hundreds of people just in the US every year, shouldn't something be done? If you talk about risk to the average person, it all sums up.
