The story says 100 people per year in the US, not specifically children, die of choking on pen lids. I can't find any source for that number. But choking is the third leading cause of death by unintentional injury (https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/deaths-by-demograph...). The vast majority of choking cases are from food, and largely by the elderly.

Edit: it appears the source for the claim is Rachfeed[1], the news and entertainment blog that this Independent story comes from. Rachfeed links to a story from OMG Facts[2] which is down due to a DNS error. The Wayback Archive only has 1 record for that page, and it's unavailable. So the only source for the claim is basically nonexistent.

A sultan-and-oligarch-owned tabloid quoting a rag quoting an unavailable source. This is a newspaper of record in the UK.

CNET ran a similar story[3] in 2016 with the "100 deaths a year" figure, quoting The Independent as a source. Thousands of sites seem to have republished it, quoting those two as sources.

[1] https://rachfeed.com/pen-caps-hole/ [2] http://www.omgfacts.com/health/8329/Pen-caps-cause-100-death... [3] https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/pen-caps-have-holes-beca...

I'm quite surprised that this actually works (or seems to, based on the Snopes link). The holes in these pen caps are tiny, and I feel like if I had one lodged in my airway I still wouldn't be able to suck enough air through that. But I guess you can't argue with results.

I wonder if computers have (will?) replaced pens in schools?

Not sure if it's the preferred term or not but the cover for the business end of a pen is often referred to as a lid.

Either term would be acceptable in the UK though. We generally don't make the distinction.

We also colloquially sometimes refer to a bike helmet as a "lid" too. Although that is slang.

Yes, lid is the normal term here.

Cap, to me, sounds like something one would do, or one would add, to a pipe stop the flow of a liquid, or just to seal it off.

Or a hat, of course.

You hear lid a lot more than cap.

Oh, I remember seeing the occasional Lego head with a solid top when I was younger but never gave it a second thought. I want to say this changed in the early 1990s at the latest?

From the article: "it is not about preventing the ink drying on the nib."

Not a problem with ballpoints.

Fountain pens are a different matter and many modern pens have perforated caps. The usual fix is a spot of candle wax to seal them up. (The wax can easily be removed with warm water should you feel the need).

A ball point pen dispenses ink by the little ball rotating. So the lid is more to prevent that happening than to stop the residual ink dying.

That said, the only time I've ever had a ball point leak is when the ball is upwards and the ink reservoir opening down, so I would always put the lid on and pop it in the pocket lid down, making a mockery of the clip.

Children apparently. And common enough apparently that ISO formalized it:

> This document specifies requirements to reduce the risk of asphyxiation from caps for writing and marking instruments. It relates to such instruments which in normal or foreseeable circumstances are likely to be used by children up to the age of 14 years.

- ISO 11540:2021, https://www.iso.org/standard/81889.html

"People" can include toddlers, etc.