Refrigerator Magnets of Death

So you're minding your own business, posting your grandkid's latest artistic masterpiece on the fridge with a little magnet of a puppy. Then... WHAM! You're down.

Or you get a new bracelet for Christmas from your BFF, George W. Bush, and you hold it too closely to your chest as you watch your favorite torture videos on Air Force Two. ZAP! You're down.

The BBC reports:

A strong type of magnet used in many new commercialproducts can interfere with pacemakers and implanted heart devices withdeadly consequences.

Close contact - within about 3cm - with a neodymiummagnet is enough to destabilise these life-saving heart devices, HeartRhythm journal reports...

Very strong magnets made from neodymium-iron-boron, which are shiny and silver in colour, have only recently become available.

But because of their high magnetic field strength andlow production costs, they are being used in computer hard drives,
headphones and hi-fi speakers, as well as toys, jewellery and evenclothes.

My comments and questions, after the jump...

The story does say that you need to be near one of these magnets for a while for it to zap your pacemaker.

So three centimeters -- the distance a heart apparently needs to be from one of these magnets -- isn't a lot. How far is the heart from the surface of the skin, anyway? Anybody know?

And what was wrong with the old style of refrigerator magnets anyway? They seemed to stick on pretty well.