[meteorite-list] Another reason to only use magnets for testing meteorites

From: Rob and Colleen <iguana_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:04:52 2004
Message-ID: <3CED9E61.3C192E47_at_pcez.com>

SHEFFIELD, England

                A group of children who adorned their
                bodies with industrial-strength magnets narrowly avoided
permanent
                disfigurement, a medical journal said.

                In a craze that spread through the northern city of
Sheffield, children held
                the magnets onto their faces and genitals by placing
another magnet inside
                their mouths, noses or on the other side of their
organs, so as to look as if
                they had body piercings, the report said.

                The magnets attracted each other with such force that
they cut off the blood
                supply to the regions concerned and allowed the flesh to
decay. Several
                children were admitted to hospital with holes developing
in their noses or
                genitals as a result.

                In trying to give themselves fake lip piercings, several
children let the magnets
                slip down their throats, and in one case sections of a
nine year-old girl's gut
                were clamped together by a pair of magnets she had
swallowed, causing
                potentially fatal perforations in her intestine.

                "I don't know where the magnets came from. Someone must
have dumped
                them and the kids got hold of them and started trading
them in the
                playground," said Derek Burke, a doctor at Sheffield
Children's Hospital
                involved with the report.

                The report on the magnet craze, which developed two
years ago, was
                published in the May edition of the Emergency Medical
Journal.

--
Rob Wesel
--------------
We are the music makers...and we are the dreamers of the dreams.
Willy Wonka, 1971

Received on Thu 23 May 2002 09:58:57 PM PDT