Sneak is indebted to US magazine Popular Science for drawing attention to the following medical alert: if you’re going to swallow magnets, don’t swallow more than one. As might not be obvious to all, the magnets will try to stick together, even when passing through different loops of intestine. The resulting unnatural bowel movements can lead to constriction, necrosis and, if left untreated, a rather painful death.
Reading through the source material for the magazine’s story also highlights another danger. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanning equipment paints pictures of the inside of your body using intense magnetic fields, which are strong enough to whisk a steel fire extinguisher across a room with lethal force. So if you’ve swallowed even a single magnet, don’t let the doctors put you inside an MRI scanner. If you do, you will be rapidly reunited with the magnet in a somewhat bloody, Alien-esque manner.

06 Apr 2006