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.

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

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.