by Claudia Boyd-Barrett posted in Parenting

Here's one thing to keep off your Christmas shopping list: sets of small, high-powered magnets that can be manipulated to form different shapes.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and other health groups are urging parents to avoid buying these magnet sets, which they say pose a severe danger to children. They're also calling on government regulators to remove the sets from stores.
These magnets are not the same as the ones you might put on your fridge. The sets typically contain more than one hundred small magnetic balls or cubes. They're designed for adults, but if children get their hands on the sets they could end up putting the tiny magnets in their mouths. If a child swallows 2 or more, the magnets could attract each other within the body. That could lead to devastating internal injuries and even death, the AAP said.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recently ordered a halt to sales of sets from the brand Zen Magnets. But health groups are worried that sets made by other companies are still being sold.
According to the AAP, thousands of people ? many of them children ? have ended up in emergency rooms in the past because of injuries from the magnet sets. In 2014, a child died after ingesting a high-powered magnet product. The number of injuries dropped to just a few following a ban on the sets, but that ban was lifted in Nov. 2016 so the magnets are now back on store shelves, the AAP said.
If you suspect...