A 13-year-old boy was left needing major surgery after he swallowed “around 100” high-powered magnets after buying them on Temu.
Surgeons in New Zealand were forced to remove part of the boy’s intestines after he complained of abdominal pain after swallowing the powerful magnets which he had purchased online.
The unnamed teenager was taken to Tauranga hospital on New Zealand’s North Island after suffering four days of agony following his unusual snack.
“He disclosed ingesting approximately 80 to 100 5x2mm high-power (neodymium) magnets about one week prior,” said a report by hospital doctors in the New Zealand Medical Journal on Friday.
The ultra powerful magnets, banned in New Zealand since January 2013, were bought on the Chinese online marketplace Temu, medics said. The small, pellet-shaped magnets had stuck together into four long strips inside the child’s intestines.
“These [strips] appeared to be in separate parts of bowel adhered together due to magnetic forces,” the report said. The strips had stuck together, trapping bits of flesh between them, causing necrosis – or tissue death – due to the pressure in four areas of the boy’s small bowel and caecum, part of the large intestine.
Surgeons operated on the lad to remove the magnets and cut out the areas of dead tissue and he was able to return home after eight days in hospital. No date was given for the operation. Temu said it had launched an investigation to ensure it complies with safety requirements in New Zealand.
“This case highlights not only the dangers of magnet ingestion but also the dangers of the online marketplace for our paediatric population,” said the authors of the paper, Binura Lekamalage, Lucinda Duncan-Were and Nicola Davis. The kind of bowel surgery performed can lead to complications later in life such as bowel obstruction, abdominal hernia and chronic pain, they said.
Temu said it was sorry to learn of the boy’s surgery. “We have launched an internal review and reached out to the authors of the New Zealand Medical Journal article to obtain more details about the case,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
“At this stage, we have not been able to confirm whether the magnets involved were purchased through Temu or identify the specific product listing. Nonetheless, our teams are reviewing relevant listings to ensure full compliance with local safety requirements.”
The Chinese-founded e-commerce company has been criticised in the EU for allegedly failing to get rid of illegal products from its platform.
