A study conducted at a children's hospital in Ontario, Canada warns that high-powered magnetic ball-bearing toys present an increased choking risk among children that could require surgery. Many of these toys are made and sold in China.

These magnetic ball-bearing toys, also known as magnetic building spheres, are being marketed as magnetic arts and crafts toys or as building sets children can use to create various shapes or unique jewelry.

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Matt Strickland, a general surgery resident at The Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Toronto, says they are seeing more patients coming to hospital for surgery to have the spherical magnets removed from the gastrointestinal tract.

The study published in The Journal of Pediatrics said many children who swallowed the ball magnets required surgery. In some cases, surgeons also had to remove small parts of the children's intestines.

The study discovered that out of 2,722 patients that visited their hospital for foreign-body ingestions, 94 were children who had swallowed these magnets. Some 30 children had swallowed multiple magnets.

Swallowing multiple magnets is more dangerous since magnets can stick to each another as they travel through the gastrointestinal tract and could tear a hole in the bowel.

The location of the magnets is difficult to pinpoint inside the body and only X-rays can ascertain their location. Severe damage to the gastrointestinal tract is a possibility.

Magnets being sold today are 20 times more powerful than older magnets and thus have the potential to cause more damage to internal organs, said the study.

In late 2011, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) issued its first warning about the dangers posed by these high-powered, ball-bearing magnets. It said the magnets continue to pose a serious safety risk to children in the USA.

CPSC said it had received 14 reports of problems related to these types of magnets compared to just one incident in 2009. The victims were children ranging in age from 18 months to 15 years. Eleven of these children required surgery to have the magnets removed.