A three-year-old girl in the US was hospitalised after she accidentally swallowed 37 high-powered rare earth Buckyball magnets.
According to Oregon’s KPTV, Payton Bushnell had complained to her parents about stomach pain.
At first, Aaron and Kelli Bushnell thought their child simply had a stomachache, but her symptoms continued, and an X-ray at the hospital finally revealed a circular grouping of magnets in her stomach.
The magnets reportedly snapped Payton’s intestines together, punched one hole in her stomach and three in her intestine.
Her parents said that she might have mistaken the small metallic balls as edible toppings they often use to decorate cupcakes.
Physicians at Children’s Hospital in Portland rushed Payton into surgery and she is now making a full recovery.
“If we had any idea what those magnets could have done to our daughter’s intestines I would have never had them in our house,” ABC News quoted the mother as telling KPTV.
People tend to experience flu-like symptoms within a couple days of ingesting the magnets.
According to Kim Dulic, a spokesperson for the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the problem with children and teenagers accidentally ingesting high-powered magnets has been on the rise in recent years.