Hundreds of children hospitalised amid terrifying magnet trend sweeping across Britain: Doctors warn toddlers are being left scarred for life and could even die from swallowing colourful toys being sold online

Daily Mail​

18-05-2025

Hundreds of children a year are being hospitalised in Britain after swallowing magnets in a horrifying new trend leaving victims scarred for life, a new study reveals.
Doctors and safety campaigners say youngsters are being put at risk by popular toys and called for a new crackdown on the online sale of products containing magnets.
About 300 under-16s were admitted to A&E in a single year after ingesting the tiny metal items found in items such as 'fidget toys' - with one in ten needing life-saving operations.
Today's new report by experts at the University of Southampton is the first UK study to investigate how many children have swallowed magnets.
Warnings about the risks have been backed by the mother of a girl who was left fighting for her life as a two-year-old after ingesting 14 brightly coloured magnetic balls.
Doctors had to temporarily remove Rebecca McCarthy's intestines to reach the magnets which had attracted together and buried deeply into her tissue.
Her mother Sam, from Basildon in Essex, said: 'I would hate for any other child to go through what Becca suffered because of buying dangerous toys from sellers on online marketplaces.'
Doctors have said that children who swallow two or more magnets were at a far higher risk of long-term damage, as the pieces can clamp together in stomachs.
Magnets are found in a wide range of toys, such as magnetic ball sets as well as fake piercings and other household objects.
Six per cent of swallowing cases were linked to viral social media trends in which children, mostly girls, try to imitate tongue piercings by placing small magnets in their mouths, the new study found.
More than two in every 100,000 children swallow magnets each year according to the data provided by 66 UK hospitals between May 2022 and April 2023.
However, that figure is likely to be far higher, according to lead author Prof Nigel Hall, because not all hospitals across the country shared their information.
Rebecca McCarthy's mother Sam has told of how her ordeal after swallowing the 14 marbles 'devastated the whole family' - and the trauma remains five years on.
She said the first sign Rebecca was unwell was when she vomited one lunchtime.
Sam said: 'She had months of ongoing health issues. I still find it incredibly painful to think about.
'The memory will never fade. I would hate for any other child to go through what Becca suffered because of buying dangerous toys from sellers on online marketplaces.'
And Prof Hall, lead author of the new report, said retailers must do more to increase warnings on magnetic toy labels.
He said: 'These magnets have potential to harm a large number of children and young people and increase work for the NHS.
'Yet many magnetic toys provide very little warning for parents and caregivers of the dangers they pose, particularly those purchased from online marketplaces.
'Having an unplanned emergency operation is a traumatic experience for any child and their family – and needing a surgical procedure means time in hospital for days after.
'Around one in 10 of these young patients had surgery with most ending up with serious problems, like needing part of their bowel removed or requiring a stoma.'
The research has been welcomed by the Child Accident Prevention Trust, whose chief executive Katrina Phillips urged families: 'Take great care when buying magnets.
'We've seen magnetic toys with a flux of 850, 17 times higher than the legal limit of 50.
'These super strong magnets can rip through a child's guts and leave them with life-changing injuries.
Professor of Paediatric Surgery Nigel Hall, of the University of Southampton and Southampton Children's Hospital, is the lead author of a new study warning about magnet dangers
'Take a moment to check who you're buying from. Don't assume that, just because you can buy something, it must be safe.'
Southampton experts also emphasised the importance of attending emergency departments early if a child is known or suspected to have swallowed a magnet.
Prof Hall added: 'Most children who have swallowed a magnet do not show any symptoms, so it is really important that all cases have an X-ray to find out for certain.'
Recalling her daughter's ordeal, Sam McCarthy told how the family initially thought the two-year-old had a gastric bug.
But after two days they went to A&E and an X-ray revealed the 14 magnetic balls inside Rebecca's stomach and she was rushed into surgery under an anaesthetic.
Sam said: 'She was taken to the X-ray room and scans were taken. That's when my life changed forever in an instant.
'As the anaesthetic kicked in, I was escorted from the operating room and stepped out into what felt like total darkness. Rebecca was in the hands of the surgeons now.
'Those two hours felt like a lifetime. So much waiting, not really knowing what was happening.'
WHAT ARE THE RISKS OF SWALLOWING MAGNET BALLS?
If a child swallows the small balls, magnets effectively burn holes in their intestines or bowels.
The magnets stick together internally and through organs and tissues, and can cut off blood supply causing tissue to die.
They are much more complex than button batteries to extract.
The child will need emergency surgery, then, depending on the severity of the injuries, they may need numerous operations, bowel resection and time in paediatric intensive care.
Source: Child Accident Prevent Trust
Rebecca has since recovered - but medics warned her parents to be on alert for potential follow-up symptoms and they remain concerned five years on.
The magnetic balls had come from three sets bought for her nine-year-old brother for Christma - and there were more than 600 tiny balls across their Basildon home.
After the surgery, Rebecca's father Steve spent weeks going over the house for the tiny balls.
Even with a giant magnet to try to attract them Sam and Steve knew some could escape detection, attaching to screws on the bottom of chairs or down the sides of furniture.
Sam said: 'When we finally got home, I was so worried about Rebecca I slept next to her for weeks - our home felt like a warzone, knowing these horrible little magnets could be anywhere.'
The new Southampton study, published in the journal Archives Of Diseases In Childhood, comes amid mounting pressure for tighter rules over the sale of magnetic toys including balls and beads.
Online petitions have been launched against the products, as campaigners said that unscrupulous internet sellers were operating in an unregulated 'Wild West'.
A coroner warned about the dangers following the death of eight-year-old schoolboy Rhys Millum, from Harrogate in North Yorkshire.
Rhys, described as a 'live-wire' and 'daredevil', died after his small intestine was perforated by ten 3mm silver spherical magnets which had all stuck together in a 30mm long row in his bowel.
He did not tell anyone he had swallowed the tiny balls - 10 days after a discussion with his brother about boosting social media profiles by performing daredevil stunts.
But 'the reality of what was inside him' was only revealed by a full body CT scan several days after his life was cut tragically short, a coroner said.
His mother Andrea Boyd, from Harrogate, North Yorkshire, said that following his tragic death the family had discussed seeing the magnets featured on social media as a 'fake piercing challenge' where the person puts one magnet on the outside of the cheek and the other on the inside of the cheek.
Recording a misadventure conclusion at Northallerton Coroner's Court, coroner, Mrs Catherine Cundy said: 'I do note they (the police) found a video of him playing with his brother showing Rhys was a least aware of the concept of social media challenges and would have had had access to social media platforms like YouTube and may have seen people using magnets in this way.
'This was a wholly tragic series of events. Rhys did not understand the dangers of swallowing these magnets and did not tell anyone he had swallowed them or link them to his symptoms.
'I know these magnetic balls are legal to sell. I hope the tragedy of Rhys's death will at least highlight the dangers particularly to children who might swallow them, accidentally or deliberately, without being aware of the dangers.'
And it was revealed in March how a baby from Northamptonshire accidentally swallowed magnets from a toy and almost died while needing an operation to remove them from her body.
Medics had to remove part of one-year-old Araya Whateley's bowel during seven-hour emergency surgery - and she has since had a stoma bag.
The magnetic beads belonged to Araya's nine-year-old sister Isla who had received them from a classmate in a 'school swapsie'.
Araya Whateley's mother Hannah, 29, had no idea her daughter was ingesting the beads after they had been left on the back seat of the family's car.
She only realised something was seriously wrong when Araya started throwing up on February 21, before the girl was rushed to Northampton General Hospital and initially treated for gastroenteritis.
Araya was discharged but needed returning to A&E when she started choking in the hospital car park.
An X-ray revealed she had swallowed several balls cluttering in her stomach and the child was transferred to Leicester Royal Infirmary.
Speaking from her daughter's hospital bedside, Hannah Whateley said: 'There were six magnets in total which were stuck together in a clump.
'The magnets have caused Araya's intestine to close and it killed that part of her bowel, which was starving her.
'There was another hole that needed repairing on the other side of her intestine, which is attempting to be done using a stoma bag.'
Ms Whateley has joined calls for restrictions on the sale of such toys containing magnets, saying: 'I don't want anyone to go through this, it is every parent's worst nightmare.
'These awful things need to be banned immediately before any other children are hospitalised.'
Meanwhile, a 12-year-old schoolboy from Prestwich in Greater Manchester underwent life-saving surgery after swallowing 54 toy magnets in what was described as part of an 'experiment'.
Rhiley Morrison ate the magnetic balls across two separate occasions to see whether they would make metal objects stick to his stomach - and was also curious about what they would look like when he passed them.
But when the metal balls had still not appeared four days later he told to his mother Paige Ward, 30, that he had swallowed two 'by accident'.
She rushed him to hospital where doctors carried out an X-ray and were stunned to discover 54 of the powerful magnet toys in his stomach and bowel.
Doctors feared the magnets might burn through tissue or vital organs, which could have caused potentially fatal internal damage, and rushed Rhiley into surgery where the objects were scooped out during a six-hour operation.
His mother shared details of 16-day hospital ordeal in a bid to educate parents about the potential dangers of magnetic ball toys - while urging the items to be binned before such scares happen again.
She said: 'I don't want other kids or parents going through that. When he did it I thought it was just him, he's just been silly and done it, but the surgeon said they see this all the time.
'Magnets aren't toys, they shouldn't be sold as toys. My message to other parents is to just put them in the bin, don't buy them in the first place.
'I don't care how nice they look and how many children ask for them because they're 'cool', they're just not worth it.
'The surgeon said that if Rhiley didn't tell me that day he'd swallowed the magnets he could have died.
'They could have clashed and ripped his bowel and he could have ended up with sepsis. Rhiley was lucky but some kids aren't and won't be.
Consumer group Which? says more than 90 per cent of such magnetic toys bought through online marketplaces should not be sold legally in Britain - and more than half present a risk to children playing with them.
A study published by the consumer watchdog last December reported on the scale of potentially hazardous toys available for sale across the internet.
The products found online by researchers included a magnetic fishing set from which the magnets detached during testing, bought from an eBay seller.
Which? described its 'tiny' magnets as 'a choking hazard' - warning they 'could seriously hurt any child who swallowed them'.
Rocio Concha, Which?'s director of policy and advocacy, previously told MailOnline: 'Our research shows it's frighteningly easy to find dangerous toys for sale on some of the world's most popular online marketplaces - including toys with magnets.
'We would recommend that shoppers be careful about buying unbranded toys on online marketplaces, as it is hard to have confidence that they will meet UK safety standards set in law to protect consumers.
"The UK government must act fast and use its Product Regulation and Metrology Bill to put much greater legal responsibility on online marketplaces for keeping unsafe items off their platforms.
'This must include tough enforcement action, such as heavy fines, if they breach the rules. If you suspect that your child has swallowed a magnet, take them to A&E and let staff know.'