Zen Magnets publicly refuses CPSC product recall

Following the Administrative Complaint issued last week against Buckyballs, the Consumer Product Safety Commision (CPSC) has begun to issue recall requests to other brands of high-powered magnet spheres. Including one sent to Zen Magnets, a company with no record of injuries.

 "If you slice us down, the last of our company's efforts will be to siren this injustice before we fall," said Founder Shihan Qu, in his recent press release in the form of a public response to CPSC voluntary recall requests made by the Office of Compliance and Field Operations of the CPSC. "We have had exactly Zero ingestion incidents... We have never referred to our product as a toy. We have never put our product on toy shelves, where kids can grab them and shove them in the faces of their parents."

The CPSC has been targeting makers of "aggregated masses of small, powerful, individual magnets," claiming the products create a substantial risk of injury to the public. Although there have been no recorded injuries caused by Zen Magnets, the statistical danger of comparable products is questionable. Of over 2.5 million sets of Buckyballs sold, two dozen children and teenagers have ingested the magnets. Some suffered internal injuries that required surgical intervention after swallowing more than one of the tiny magnets, which snapped together inside their gastrointestinal track.

In the seemingly frustrated response to the recall request, Qu accused the the CPSC of "lacking perspective" and "showing no attempt to perform a cost-benefit analysis". Zen Magnets is the magnet second company to publicly refuse the CPSC directly on their website, after GetBuckyBalls.com. This is also one of the first times the CPSC has faced public petition (savemagnets.com) against their actions, marking one of the most unfavorable actions in the history of the consumer watchdog group.