Kids swallow things. Especially small, shiny things. It happens every day. It is predictable. Less predictable are the dangers these products present when more than one magnet is swallowed.

Once ingested, high-powered magnets find each other inside the body and shred any tissue, such as bowel, trapped in between. Prompt medical evaluation is always needed in order to perform endoscopy or surgery urgently, repair damage, and prevent further injury.

Recognizing these unique hazards, the professional society for pediatric gastroenterologists, the North American Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition, mobilized a coalition representing over 90,000 physicians and countless consumers. In early 2012, this coalition approached the Consumer Product Safety Commission with one simple ask: eliminate these high-powered magnet sets from the market.

The CPSC shared the doctors’ concerns; by late 2012, the agency ultimately recalled high-powered magnet sets and, two years later, when I was serving on the commission, we enacted a rule to effectively ban the sale of similar products.

These efforts worked temporarily with a substantial decrease in childhood injuries. But one company, Zen Magnets, remained unconvinced, and sued the CPSC, fighting both the recall on existing magnets, and the rules banning future sales.

Thanks to anti-regulatory (so-called “conservative”), pro-industry judges and Trump-appointed CPSC commissioners, Zen ultimately won on both fronts.

First, the rule set was struck down by two judges on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals with the deciding vote cast by now-Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. These judges ignored the expertise of the CPSC epidemiologists and economists; ignored the compelling medical testimony, overwhelming expert evidence and dire safety consequences and substituted their own opinion in favor of promoting “government restraint” on regulating industry.

Second, after President Donald Trump was elected, the commission reversed the recall. In its litigation, Zen argued that the CPSC could not require a recall since Zen did not intend children to swallow the magnets. In short, Zen employed the common manufacturer argument that use of a product in a manner not intended by the manufacturer, even if the “misuse” is foreseeable, cannot be the subject of a CPSC recall.

This is a reversal of long-standing practice. Relying on clear congressional intent and decades of agency precedent, the CPSC long has pursued recalls and enforcement actions for foreseeable misuse of consumer products. Nonetheless, the new Trump-appointed CPSC commissioners took no action on high-powered magnets. These dangerous products were allowed back on the market.

We now know the price of their approach to consumer safety: The nation’s poison control centers recorded six times more magnet ingestions―totaling nearly 1,600 cases in 2019 alone—after the 10th circuit court decision allowed magnets back on the market. Further, with the CPSC largely sidelined, industry is now pushing for a “voluntary standard” that would require little more than a warning label, which already proved ineffective years ago.

The CPSC is a government agency created in 1972 with bipartisan support by the Consumer Product Safety Act to protect the public against unreasonable risks of injury or death associated with most consumer products other than food, drugs, automobiles and guns.

Until recently, the CPSC has been at the forefront in protecting us and our kids from dangerous products. Sadly, that is no longer true. The CPSC is now controlled by the very industries it was formed to regulate, due both to President Donald Trump’s choices for agency leadership and recent anti-regulatory court decisions.

Today, the CPSC effectively needs full industry support to take any action. Even recalls are done only on the company’s terms and only when the company wishes to do so. And as government protections erode, American consumers are beginning to see the alarming results, and not just on magnets.

Take the case of Britax. According to CPSC engineers, the Britax jogging stroller has a defect linked to hundreds of serious injuries. Yet in October 2018, the new Trump-appointed majority decided not to pursue a lawsuit filed by previous CPSC commissioners seeking to force a recall. The new majority asked Britax only to send replacement parts to a limited number of affected consumers. Later, even the replacement parts were found to be defective .

Or take Fisher-Price. In April 2019, after 32 infant deaths were linked to its Rock ’n Play Sleeper, the CPSC issued a mere warning rather than a recall. Only after a Consumer Reports exposé and outcry at the American Academy of Pediatrics did Fisher-Price and other manufacturers voluntarily recall inclined sleepers. It was only after this voluntary recall that the CPSC revealed that these products were actually linked to 73 infant deaths and 1,108 incidents from 2005 to 2019. Only now is the CPSC pursuing a ban.

Then there’s Polaris, which continues to market the defectively designed RZR All Terrain Vehicle, that has caused hundreds of fires, many deaths and serious injuries.

The oversight of the 2016 IKEA recall of 17.3 million unstable Malm dressers was so poorly managed by the CPSC that, three years after the recall, less than 3 percent of the products have been returned for a refund; meanwhile, children continue to die.

The CPSC’s new―and unsupported posture―on misuse cripples future efforts to regulate any dangerous product that hurts children who use a product in a way not intended by the manufacturer. In fact, instead of protecting children, we’ll be endangering them for developmentally normal behavior.

Acting Chair Ann Marie Buerkle recently left the CPSC, leaving the commission with just four members, split 2-2 between Democrats and Republicans; however, the Trump administration has just announced its intent to nominate a new chair, Nancy Beck. Beck is a former executive from the American Chemistry Council who has been at the Environmental Protection Agency in recent months pushing to relax rules on toxic chemicals linked to neurological defects. The ACC has consistently lobbied the CPSC to allow dangerous chemicals linked to cancer and endocrine-disruption in various products, including children’s toys. It is very unlikely that she will take action to prevent children from being harmed from magnets or improve the commission’s record on other consumer safety issues.

It has become clear that Congress must exercise its oversight authority to ensure public safety if the Trump-appointed commissioners will not. It should start by passing the bill recently proposed by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) banning these high-powered magnet sets and should make every effort to reform the agency, starting with refusing to confirm any person as the new chair who has not exhibited a willingness to place consumer safety before the interests of the regulated industry.

I’ve seen enough injuries from high-powered magnets. Now the question is, has Congress?

