When a professional speaks from real experience, you tend to listen, especially when the topic involves danger, risk, and real-world consequences. Sure, it’s always smart to double-check information, but sometimes experts are giving you the hard truth people don’t want to hear.
That’s exactly what one medical malpractice and catastrophic injury lawyer did when he took to TikTok to share the most shockingly dangerous things he’s seen in his career. From everyday products to hidden hazards most of us never think twice about, his insights opened a lot of eyes.
#1
Anybody who’s using any sort of keratin based hair treatment should be aware that in certain situations and based on the products, there’s absolutely an established risk of developing cancer that includes lung cancer, nasopharyngeal cancer, sinus cancer, throat cancer. And basically what has happened is that with a lot of these keratin based products there’s either formaldehyde which is a known carcinogen, a known cancer causing chemical or a formaldehyde producing chemical that basically produces formaldehyde. And the reason that some of these keratin based products require or have formaldehyde is that chemically, the formaldehyde allows the keratin that occurs naturally in your hair, which is a protein, to bind with the keratin that’s included as an ingredient artificially in the product. In that binding process, uh, which is brought about through the formaldehyde, is what causes the desired effect of the hair, the smoothing, the straightening, whatever you want to call it. So technically that formaldehyde has a purpose in bringing about the effect of the product. However, when formaldehyde is heated to certain levels, meaning through temperature, through an iron or whatever it’s heated up, the vapors emit into the air and they can be inhaled and that’s what can cause the cancer. Um, so they’ve really seen this demonstrated statistically and scientifically, especially in people who work in a salon or are applying these types of treatments all the time.
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#2
Water beads. If you haven’t seen water beads, they’re these little, teeny little plastic beads. They come in packets of hundreds or thousands, and they’re supposed to be used for texture and tactile stimulation to help kids with sensory stuff. But when water beads are put in water, which is what they’re for, they’re originally made for agricultural purposes, like for farmers to put in soil to help you know, expand growth of plants underground. These teeny little beads blow up into big water beads. And there have been so many instances of kids swallowing one water bead or just a couple water beads and dying or having their airway blocked off or something else, because those beads are expanding in their airway or in their esophagus.
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#3
Any incline sleeper device. Fisher Price recalled their rock and play devices, which I think we’re the most popular brand of this. But that’s any sort of swing or bassinet that’s at an incline that’s marketed in any way that a baby can sleep in it. And that’s just bad because the American Academy of Pediatrics, AAP has recommended for years babies sleep on a flat surface parallel to the ground. Because they don’t have the neck strength when they’re newborns, such that if they’re sleeping at an angle their heads can tilt forward and they don’t have the neck strength to lift it up. And that can close their airway off. Urban cases of asphyxia, asphyxiation, and death. Or if they roll to the side, same concept. They can’t roll back, tilt towards center.
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One thing the lawyer pointed out was the shocking number of unsafe toys being sold every year. With millions of toys hitting the market, children get their hands on them long before parents have time to check every detail. This makes safety more than just a concern, it’s a responsibility. Toys should be designed to protect children, not put them at risk. When small parts, sharp edges, or harmful materials slip through, the consequences can be serious. Kids trust what they’re given, and parents assume products on shelves are safe. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case.
#4
Tegu floating magnetic stackers. Uh, this is pretty scary cause these were made for kids age 6 months to 3 years. And they’re little magnets that stack on top of each other that kids are supposed to play with and promotes tactile stimulation and just kind of like using their hands and motor skills. However, there were pieces of magnets that were attached to these stackers that could easily be detached. So those are recalled because ingestion of magnets for anyone, especially a kid, can pose a serious risk of internal injury or death.
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#5
As a catastrophic injury and death lawyer, I deal with some of the most dangerous products and some of the worst situations in the world. But if you were to ask me what’s the one product that I’m most afraid of or that I would never go near, it’s without a doubt round up. The weed killer, the spray weed killer.
And if you don’t know this already, there have been study after study that demonstrates a link between use of round up and non Hodgkin’s lymphoma, NHL, a type of blood cancer. But the craziest thing that I’ve realized in representing numerous people in round up cases is that, like, the latency period, which is the period between when you’re exposed to the chemical, in this case, round up, or the product round up, and the time that your cancer is diagnosed.
The latency period for NHL due to round up exposure can be 5, 10, even 20 years, meaning you might not even get the diagnosis until up to 20 years after you used the product. Which is crazy to me and also confusing to people who’ve been diagnosed because they think, oh, it’s been so long, I can’t file a lawsuit. But that’s not necessarily true, because under the law, there’s something called the discovery rule, which basically means that if you didn’t know or reasonably shouldn’t have known that the cause of your cancer was due to some negligence or some wrongdoing by another person, we’re not going to hold you to the regular statute of limitations. So it is a product I would never touch. Round up. And they’ve said that they have a new mixture that changed the ingredients and makes it safer, while at the same time arguing in court that the original mixture and the original ingredients aren’t dangerous.
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#6
As a medical malpractice lawyer, I literally see the worst of the worst. But one of the most common and scariest and most concerning cases I see is what we call a lack of informed consent. And basically all that means is that somebody underwent a surgery or a procedure, and the surgeon did not inform the patient of all of the risks of the surgery or the severity or permanence of the risks. And the best example I can give you is spine surgery, where somebody goes in for a spine surgery that carries a risk of paralysis, meaning that even if everything is done perfectly fine, there’s still a risk that during the surgery, you could come out paralyzed. But the doctor doesn’t tell the patient that before the surgery. And the patient, not knowing that, signs off on the surgery. This happens way more than you would think. And you’re actually entitled to be compensated legally if that happens to you. Even if the doctor wasn’t necessarily negligent during the surgery and there was a known risk because they didn’t tell you about the risk.
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Different countries try to keep children safe in different ways, but not every system is equally strong. Europe, for example, has some of the toughest toy regulations in the world. Their rules don’t just scratch the surface, they get into the fine details of design, materials, and testing. The goal is simple: toys sold in the EU shouldn’t put any child at unnecessary risk. If a product doesn’t meet the standards, it doesn’t make it to the shelves.
#7
The Evermore Surprise Eggs. These were these little play toy eggs like this that had a little metal air airplane inside, just kind of a little trinket. The problem is that the lead levels In the airplane cause it was made out of lead, exceeded federal limits. And one of the things that you need to know about this is that even if your kids not directly putting that lead metal thing in their mouth, the hand to mouth contact that occurs with children is sufficient scientifically for a child to ingest lead.
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#8
Youbeien crib mobiles. Everyone knows what a crib mobile is. It goes above the baby’s crib and there’s little things that baby can reach up and play with. So this was recalled in September 2025 because of button battery risk. There were actually button batteries in this product that could be accessed without a screwdriver or without a tool. They were in a little remote piece that goes with the mobile that a kid could get a hold of and access hypothetically without a screwdriver or tool. If you don’t know about button batteries, they’re horrifically dangerous. If they’re swallowed or ingested, they can burn chemical holes in a matter of seconds or minutes in a baby’s esophagus or trachea causing serious, serious injury or death.
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#9
Insurance companies will wait for you to die. I’m not joking, I’m not being sarcastic, I’m not being dramatic. If you’re an injured person and you have a pending lawsuit, the way the insurance company looks at it is, if you die, we’ll pay less because you don’t have ongoing medical care or ongoing, you know, lost wages or ongoing expenses. So they will literally. If they think there’s a chance you will die before trial, they will wait. They will literally late wait for that reason.
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The EU Toy Safety Directive is the backbone of these rules. First adopted in 2009 and fully rolled out by 2011, it reshaped how toys could be made and sold. By 2013, strict chemical safety requirements became mandatory, tightening protection even further. The directive ensures that companies have no room to cut corners on safety. It’s not optional, and every toy sold in the EU must comply. For parents, this means greater peace of mind. For companies, it means they are held accountable from the design table to the factory line.
#10
Obstetricians are the top medical specialty that I personally see getting sued most often. And this is your traditional birth injury case, where the baby is in distress and is not delivered soon enough. And as a result, the baby suffers catastrophic brain. Brain damage. And that happens way more frequently than you would imagine if you are in this field or you are in medicine.
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#11
The insurance company lawyers sometimes can get paid by your money from the insurance money that you receive for being injured. This is called an eroding policy. An eroding policy. It basically means that, um, the lawyers for the insurance company get paid out of the funds that you would get paid for your injury. So let’s say there’s a million dollar insurance policy for your injury. If it’s in a rotting policy, I’ve had situations where the lawyers go, yep, well, it’s down to 850,000 now because we’ve incurred 150,000 in legal fees. That’s allowed. And it comes right out of the same recovery that you would get.
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#12
ER doctors, emergency room doctors are the top medical specialties that I personally see getting sued most often. And almost always when there’s a case against an ER doctor, it’s not that they did something improperly, it’s that they failed to do something. They failed to order an X ray, they failed to order a brain MRI. They failed to consult a specialist like a neurologist or a neurosurgeon. And then something really bad happened cause they Failed to do that. It’s not usually against an ER doctor, an improper performance. It’s usually a failure to do something.
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The directive covers a huge range of possible hazards, leaving very few gaps. It looks at both general and specific risks—generally meaning anything that could affect the health or safety of children or caregivers, and specific meaning risks like choking, mechanical injuries, chemical exposure, electrical issues, and even fire hazards. If a toy can break, be swallowed, burn, leak toxins, or harm a child in any way, the regulations demand that the issue is addressed. These standards exist because real injuries have happened in the past. And the lawyer’s stories show why rules like these matter.
#13
Heart attack. So we think about chest pain is one of the most obvious symptoms of a heart attack. And that’s true. But there are a couple other subtle but important signs of impending cardiac arrest. And those are atroponent level, which is a certain blood value that’s taken that, when elevated, can indicate cardiac arrest or damage to the heart muscle. And then also I see a lot of times, uh, jaw pain or teeth pain or molar pain. So, as I’m sure you can imagine, the. The heart attacks pretty self explanatory as to how that can be dangerous.
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#14
One of the most common cases I see in the type of infection that we’re talking about varies, but generally speaking, is a failure to diagnose what I’ll call a spinal infection or a spinal cord infection. And that could be meningitis, that could be transverse myelitis. These are different types of infections that can originate in the spinal cord or permeate to the spinal cord or affect the spinal cord, whether or not they start there. Um, but the symptoms are often similar. Extreme back pain, um, you can have numbness in the legs or lower extremities, tingling, um, spasms, constipation, bowel dysfunction, bladder dysfunction, uh, fever, stuff like that. That can indicate a spinal cord infection. And the primary way to diagnose this sort of infection is through imaging of the spine, whether that’s MRI, most likely most sensitive, best and most efficient, or CT scan, which can sometimes show you that there’s something there, but maybe less sensitive. And I see so many cases with patients going into the emergency department with these acute symptoms that really are textbook meningitis or textbook miliary or textbook myelitis or textbook, you know, spinal cord infection. Some sort of pathology in the spinal cord of an infectious nature. And there’s no MRI ordered, there’s no CAT scan ordered, there’s no work up at all, and the patients are sent home. And the problem with these cases is that in a really short amount of time, it can progress. The infection can progress and cause a permanent spinal cord injuries to where someone is paralyzed, um, sometimes permanently, for the rest of their life, sometimes with what we call bowel, um, incontinence or bladder incontinence, where they can’t control their, their bowel or bladder. And this can really be fixed easily and diagnosed easily. I just see that it’s dismissed and missed
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#15
Anything with button batteries. Button batteries are those little circular batteries that are about that big, and you can find them in a whole host of kids toys, even though it’s not always obvious when you buy the toy that they’re in there. The reason that button batteries are so dangerous is that they can easily be swallowed, and that when they are swallowed, they often get lodged in the esophagus or the trachea of the child. And due to the chemical composition of these particular batteries, they can, uh, erode and burn through the airway or the esophagus in an extremely fast amount of time. And that can be an emergency that can be deadly. There have been a ton of cases about button batteries
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Even allergens are taken seriously. Toys sold in the EU cannot contain 55 banned allergenic fragrances, including natural extracts like fig leaf or treemoss. These might seem harmless, but for sensitive kids, the effects can be dangerous. Beyond that, official safety standards also dictate what warnings should appear on toys, how they should be worded, and exactly where they must be placed. It’s not just about selling a product, it’s about making sure parents know any potential risk upfront. Clear rules protect everyone involved, especially children who can’t speak for themselves.
#16
Insurance companies they put a price on your case early and up front, and this is called a reserve. And they basically look at your case when it’s filed or when it comes across their desk, and they estimate how much they think they’re gonna have to settle the case later on. And that can matter, because as you get into a case, and as I litigate and take depositions and start to draw blood, so to speak, that case amount can get way higher, meaning the amount they’re gonna have to pay To settle the case can get way higher. And they might have to go adjust their reserve internally. And that can require them going up the ladder and talking to all these sorts of bean counters, so on and so forth.
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#17
Surgeons are the top medical specialty that I personally see getting sued most often. I think a lot of people assume, oh, there’s surgery. So surgeons are just messing up left and right during the surgery. And although I do see cases involving a negligent performance of a surgery or an improper technique leading to injury during surgery, or what we call intraoperative mistakes or errors, there’s so many things that can go wrong. Preoperatively, leading up to the surgery, they didn’t draw the blood, they didn’t check the, uh, INR levels or their clotting factors, so the person was more susceptible to bleeding, and they shouldn’t have gone forward anyway. Or postoperatively, after the surgery, they failed to monitor their airway, and a patient, uh, went into respiratory distress and suffered a brain injury. There’s so many things with surgery that are just inherently risky, and there are a lot of errors that can be made.
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#18
There’s one product that I would say that right now is showing us the most dangerous consequences over decades and decades of use in terms of how dangerous it can be and why, and that’s round up, which is the common weed killer. You may have seen commercial commercials for Roundup where they’re spraying it on the weeds. You might just think, oh, what’s the big deal? The big deal is that Roundup or glyphosate and different combinations of the ingredients in Roundup have been linked to causing certain types of blood cancers, specifically non Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which is a subgroup of blood cancers that encompasses many, many different kinds of blood cancers. Um, again, that’s not Hodgkin’s lymphoma, also known as NHL. And the people who are getting this type of blood cancer, people who have used the product for a significant period of time, and it’s really astounding. I’m handling these cases right now. It’s really astounding the level of knowledge that the company, Monsanto, the company that made round up was Monsanto. The level of knowledge that the company knew about the fact that this was a dangerous, toxic, and cancerous chemical, which they never told anybody. About. They never warned about it. They never put it on their warning label. And low and behold, now there are thousands of cases involving this. And I see this affecting a lot of people in Pennsylvania, but also all over the country.
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In the United States, toy safety is also enforced through law. Section 106 of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) of 2008 made toy safety standards mandatory nationwide. This means manufacturers must meet specific criteria before a product reaches consumers. The law set the bar for what materials could be used, how products should be made, and what hazards must be eliminated. While enforcement varies, the intention is the same as everywhere else: protect children before injuries occur.
#19
Failure to diagnose and treat a pulmonary embolism. So pulmonary refers to the lungs, and embolism is a blood clot, basically. So pulmonary embolism is a blood clot in the lung, and it’s actually one of the most common conditions that emergency rooms see. It’s also extremely dangerous and deadly and can kill you pretty quickly. So there are a couple different ways that this can be diagnosed. On imaging, um, and also, uh, via EKG. There are certain signs and symptoms that often times get missed by providers. People are discharged or, uh, sometimes die from pees in the hospital that haven’t been diagnosed yet.
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#20
Failure to timely diagnose and treat what we call a subdural or intradural hematoma. And that’s just a fancy word for a brain bleed, a bleeding within the brain. So this can happen for all sorts of reasons. I’m sure you can imagine trauma is the most obvious cause of bleeding the brain, but it can also happen for all sorts of other reasons. Like hypertension can cause vasoconstruction, meaning that the veins and arteries are too tight and there’s a perforation or bleed. There are many reasons that Subdural hematoma occur. The symptoms can range from extreme headache, often times described as like the worst headache that they’ve ever had, as well as nausea and vomiting, visual disturbances, other neurologic symptoms. But the gold standards for diagnosing a brain bleed is a CT scan of the of the head, and that can usually pick up a brain bleed. So I see these cases where there’s symptoms of brain bleed and they don’t even order the imaging and the person dies or suffers a catastrophic, irreversible brain injury. Or where they do order the CT scan, there’s a bleed demonstrated, but the radiologist or the ER doctor looking at the image fails to see that bleed and fails to detect it.
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The CPSIA includes requirements covering flammability, toxicity, chemical exposure, and physical hazards. Toys must be tested to make sure they don’t catch fire easily, contain dangerous levels of harmful substances, or break into swallowable pieces. It may sound standard, but these rules were put in place because many toys once failed these basic safety checks. When the cost of failure is a child getting hurt, regulations stop being bureaucratic, they become critical. The lawyer has seen what happens when safety rules aren’t followed, and the damage can be lifelong.
And this doesn’t stop with toys. Around the world, more products and services are being held to higher safety standards as governments learn from real cases. Household appliances, medical devices, children’s furniture, even playground surfaces are being reexamined. As the lawyer points out, danger can come from the most ordinary things we use every day. When professionals who deal with injury cases warn us, it’s usually because they’ve seen the worst side of neglect. Their stories remind us that safety rules exist for a reason, and they matter more than most people realize.
#21
A lawsuit that I’m litigating right now on behalf of a family of a horribly brain damaged little kid who choked on a Candyland gummy dot which was lodged in her throat for a prolonged amount of time and she suffered what we call an anoxic brain injury meaning a brain injury due to a prolonged lack of oxygen and I wanted to share with you just a little bit about the case and get your thoughts on it genuinely but I also wanted to then tell you about other similar cases that have come down the pike with these types of cases that may surprise you so long story short this Candy Land like the board game gummy dots were bought by um the stepfather of this child who then gave them to three of the kids one of whom was the youngest who was about 2 years old and the stepdad then dropped the kids off with the mother who’s my client and there was no warning label on these candies that there was any sort of age range whatsoever making it seem as if this was something safe for any kid of any age to eat so the youngest takes a bite out of one is chewing and then all of a sudden they realize that she’s not breathing so they rush over to her and they try to you know do chest patting and do the Heimlich and it won’t come out so they rush her to the hospital where it had to be vacuumed out essentially by the doctors but not before it caused irreversible permanent brain damage and she’s now basically unable to move unable to speak unable to walk unable to eat orally has a tube feed she will be permanently disabled for the rest of her life so the question is why not include a warning label for an age range? why not say this this product is not safe to eat for any child under three or under two? why not do that if you’re the company? and also do you think that a company should have to do that because at what point do you draw the line between what’s common sense and what the company has a duty to warn about in terms of what kind of food a parent should be given to their child? I will tell you that there were a couple verdicts in California involving a similar situation where there was a gel like candy that was excessively sticky and a child choked to death there was a 50 million dollar judgement entered in one case where a child choked to death and I think it was a 16 million dollar verdict in another case where a child choked to death so I wanted to share that cause I feel like a lot of people are quick to blame the parents and think there’s no real claim here but it makes you wonder how 12 jurors or how however many jurors were there in California came to those conclusions in two separate cases where the family won
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