A 13-year-old boy in New Zealand had to undergo emergency surgery after swallowing as many as 100 small high-powered magnets purchased through online retailer Temu, according to doctors at Tauranga Hospital.
The case, published in the New Zealand Medical Journal, revealed that the teen suffered four days of severe abdominal pain before disclosing that he had ingested between 80 to 100 neodymium magnets, each measuring 5×2 millimeters. The magnets, which have been banned in New Zealand since 2013, were reportedly bought on the e-commerce platform.
An X-ray showed the magnets had formed four linear clusters inside the boy’s intestines. “These appeared to be in separate parts of bowel adhered together due to magnetic forces,” the doctors said. The attraction between the magnets caused tissue death, or necrosis, in multiple areas of the small bowel and caecum.
Surgeons removed the damaged sections and extracted the magnets during an operation. The boy spent eight days in the hospital before being discharged.
“This case highlights not only the dangers of magnet ingestion but also the dangers of the online marketplace for our paediatric population,” wrote doctors Binura Lekamalage, Lucinda Duncan-Were, and Nicola Davis.
Temu said it has begun an internal investigation and reached out to the medical journal’s authors to verify the details. “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, adding that the company is reviewing product listings to ensure compliance with local safety regulations.
The Chinese-founded retailer has faced mounting scrutiny from regulators in various countries for allegedly failing to remove unsafe or illegal items from its platform.
