Last summer's recall of 18 million magnetic toys made by Mattel Inc. highlighted a risk that is high on many parents' minds this holiday season: buying toys that may still have hazardous, high-power magnets hidden in them.

Larger companies like Mattel have redesigned their toys to prevent the small magnets from falling out, and the industry drafted a new set of design and labeling standards in May intended to make magnetic toys safer and warn parents of which toys have magnets in them. The hitch: The new rules won't take effect until January, after the holidays.

That leaves parents like Janice Sirovita, a 36-year-old mother from San Jose, Calif., whose infant daughter turns 1 on Thursday, wondering what to do this December. 'You can't tell which magnets are which,' she says.

The death of a toddler in 2005 from pieces of a construction toy called Magnetix resulted in the first magnet-related recall in 2006, covering millions of the toy sets marketed by Montreal-based Mega Brands Inc. It also brought national attention to a new hazard in the toy business: Magnetix contained high-energy neodymium iron boron magnets that, when swallowed, can stick to each other in a child's intestinal track, causing potentially dangerous tissue damage.

Following the recall, Mega Brands redesigned the toy by partially embedding the magnets in plastic and sealing dangerous pieces with a cap that prevents the parts from escaping. Mattel -- which recalled 18 million toys in several popular lines including Polly Pockets and Batman -- has taken similar measures as well, injecting the magnets into plastic and employing a locking mechanism. Earlier versions of some toys had employed a chemical adhesive that failed in a number of cases to keep magnets from coming loose.

In May, the Toy Industry Association made its first attempt to address the issue, drafting a set of voluntary standards to curb the dangers of magnets. According to the new rules, which were written in association with ASTM International, a nonprofit testing-standards organization, magnets must either be 'reliably contained' within a product or the toys must carry a warning label explaining the dangers of ingestion.

Even though consumers may be left wondering about potential hazards this holiday season, the toy industry maintains it moved quickly to make the changes. Joan Lawrence, a safety specialist with the Toy Industry Association, said that new standards generally take 12 to 18 months to institute across the industry. 'We expedited the compliance process,' she says, but the new regulations couldn't go into place before the new year, given that many of this holiday's toys were manufactured during the summer.

'It's a step in the right direction, but the timing is somewhat late,' says Ed Mierzwinski, of the nonprofit U.S. Public Interest Research Group in Washington, D.C. He adds that the industry might have penned new standards more swiftly after the Magnetix recall in early 2006. Mr. Mierzwinski also questions whether labeling will be enough to solve the problem. 'If you can convince parents to keep toys from small children, it will help,' he says, but preventing older children from sharing toys with younger friends or siblings may prove a stumbling block.

Alan Oestreich, a pediatric radiologist at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center has seen this happen firsthand. Just this past summer, a toddler arrived at his office after having swallowed five small magnetic parts on a toy that was given by a sibling -- an accident that required emergency surgery to remove the metals. It was the eighth case his hospital had seen since 2004.

Realizing that a problem has occurred can be difficult for parents. Since children who have swallowed high-powered magnets generally feel little more than a mild stomachache, 'it's hard to distinguish this problem from a dozen other common illnesses,' says Dr. Oestreich. And with toddlers who are most at risk for swallowing small toys, many victims are too young to describe the symptoms or to recall what they swallowed.

Some potentially dangerous toys have continued to circulate this fall. In late October, about 110,000 backpacks sold at Target with game pieces based on the Disney movie 'Cars' were recalled voluntarily when reports arrived that magnets in the sets were coming loose. The distributor, Global Design Concepts Inc. in New York, says the toys had passed safety tests, and it is still investigating how the parts came out of the toy.

More recently, a report published last month by U.S. PIRG cites five toy lines believed to pose an ingestion hazard that were being sold in a number of discount stores nationwide. 'In some cases, we found loose magnets falling right out of the packaging,' says Mr. Mierzwinski of U.S. PIRG. The report cites two lines of magnetic jewelry as hazardous, what Mr. Mierzwinski calls a potential loophole to the new rules since jewelry isn't technically considered a 'toy' by the industry.

Safari Ltd., the U.S. distributor of Magnetic Marbles, another one of the toys on the U.S. PIRG list, says it hasn't received any ingestion complaints about the toy, which it says was designed by an outside manufacturer. But a company spokesman says the line has been discontinued and initially passed safety tests. The other companies on the list didn't return requests for comment.

去年夏季美泰公司(Mattel Inc.)召回了1,800万件含磁铁玩具，其“余震”尤存，很多父母在今年假日期间所担心的风险是：可能还会买到含有危险性强磁铁的玩具。

像美泰这样规模较大的公司为防止玩具中的小磁铁掉出来，对玩具进行了重新设计。5月份玩具产业也起草了一套新的设计及标识标准，旨在提高含磁铁玩具的安全性，并警告父母们哪些玩具含有磁铁。问题是：新的规定到明年1月份才能生效，而那时圣诞和元旦假期就已经结束了。

因此很多父母不知道今年的圣诞和新年该怎么办，来自加州圣何塞的珍尼斯•斯洛维塔(Janice Sirovita)就是其中之一。斯洛维塔现年36岁，她的女儿周四就要满周岁了。她说，你无法识别哪些磁铁是安全的，哪些是不安全的。

2005 年一名幼儿因误吞了积木玩具Magnetix的拼块致死，进而引发了2006年首次含磁铁玩具的召回，其中包括蒙特利尔Mega Brands Inc.销售的数百万件玩具。这同时还引起了全国开始关注玩具业中新发现的危险：Magnetix含有磁性很强的钕铁硼合金磁铁，这些磁铁在儿童吞食后会在肠道中彼此吸在一起，有可能会造成组织损伤。

在那次玩具召回后，Mega Brands对玩具进行了重新设计，将部分磁铁包裹在塑料中，并用密封盖将危险的部件密封起来以防止脱落。美泰曾召回了包括Polly Pockets和Batman在内的数款颇受欢迎的产品共计1,800万件玩具。该公司也采取了与Mega Brands类似的措施，将磁铁包裹在塑料中，并采用了锁定装置。一些老款的玩具使用的是化学粘合剂，但曾发生过数次磁铁脱落事件。

为解决这个问题，玩具产业协会(Toy Industry Association)今年5月份采取了首个步骤，与非盈利性检测标准组织ASTM International共同起草了一套旨在控制磁铁危险的非强制性标准。根据新的规定，磁铁必须“可靠地包含”在产品中或者玩具上必须有警示标识，解释误吞可能造成的危险。

虽然今年假日期间消费者可能仍对潜在的玩具危险心有余悸，但玩具行业表示已经迅速做出了相应的改变。玩具行业协会的安全专员琼•劳伦斯(Joan Lawrence)说，新的标准通常需要12到18个月才能在全行业实施。她说，“我们加快了审查程序。”但新的法规在新年前仍无法生效，因为今年很多玩具都是在夏季时制造的。

非营利组织U.S. Public Interest Research Group(U.S. PIRG)的爱德•米兹文斯基(Ed Mierzwinski)说，这是朝正确方向迈出的一步，但时机有点晚了。他又说，玩具业或许应该在2006年Magnetix玩具召回事件后就迅速制定新标准。他还对贴警示标识的做法是否足以解决问题表示怀疑。米兹文斯基表示，如果能说服父母让幼儿不接触玩具，或许会有点用。但是，阻止年龄稍大些的孩子与年幼的孩子一起玩玩具或许就不那么容易了。

辛辛那提儿童医院医疗中心放射医师艾伦•奥斯瑞奇(Alan Oestreich)亲身接触过这方面的案例。今年夏天，一名还在学步的孩子被送来就诊，这个孩子刚刚将家里大孩子给她一件玩具上的5枚磁性零件吞下，这种情况需要实施紧急手术取出金属。这是该院2004年以来接诊的第八个此类病例。

实际上，父母们很难发觉已经出了问题。奥斯瑞奇说，孩子们吞下强力磁性零件后通常只会感觉肚子稍微有点痛，这种情况很难跟其他十多种常见症状区分开来。正在学步的孩子最容易发生吞咽小玩具的情况，而这个年龄段的孩子往往不能描述出症状，或回忆起到底吞了什么东西。

今年秋季，一些存在潜在危险的玩具仍在市场上流通。十月底，Target销售的110,000件镶有迪斯尼卡通片《汽车总动员》(Cars)主题玩具装饰的背包被主动召回，这之前有报导说，这款产品上的磁性配件有松动的情况。该产品的纽约分销商Global Design Concepts Inc.说，这批玩具通过了安全测试，它正在调查这些配件是怎样脱落的。

非营利组织U.S. PIRG上个月发表的一份报告提到，有5个系列被认为存在误吞危险的玩具正在全美多家折扣店销售。U.S. PIRG的米兹文斯基说，我们发现了一些松动的磁性零件直接从包装里掉出来的情况。该报告还指出，有两个系列的磁性材料首饰是有害的，米兹文斯基说，这方面的新规定可能存在漏洞，因为理论上首饰是不被列为“玩具”的。

U.S. PIRG的名单上所提另一种玩具Magnetic Marbles的分销商Safari Ltd.表示，它尚未接到这种玩具有误吞情况发生的投诉。它说，这种玩具是外面的生产商设计的。不过该公司一位发言人说，这个系列的玩具已暂停销售，并已初步通过安全测试。U.S. PIRG报告上提到的其他公司没有回复记者的采访请求。