Andrew Gardner, the Ontario entrepreneur who invented the magnetic Polar Pen, is apprehensive about losing about $100,000 due to a cease and desist order by Health Canada.

Health Canada issued the order against the Polar Pen on the basis of the federal agency's take on the health threats related to the small magnets. Mr Gardner raised nearly a million through Kickstarter, a crowdsourcing Web site. The money was raised to manufacture the pen which is made of rare earth magnets, extremely strong in nature.

Mr Gardner has said that he may lose $100,000 on a personal level. The amount does not belong to his business, he said. It means that he will go into debt as the money has already been invested for the mass production of the pen.

The Polar Pen is about to be manufactured in Waterloo. People have already paid for the pen. That is why, if the pen is forced not to be manufactured, Mr Gardner has to give a refund to those people. He has to give a million back to the people who invested the amount though the crowdsourcing Web site.

Health Canada informed that the magnets used in the pen have the possibility to be harmful. They can even be deadly if children swallow them. it can be life threatening, it said. The CBC reports that the Health Canada letter mentions that swallowing incidents often cause significant damage to the gastrointestinal tissues. Such incidents require emergency surgical treatment as well as extended hospitalisation, it says. Even if some manage to survive, they can suffer from long-term health problems.

Mr Gardner, 27, launched his Kickstarter campaign on Sept 10 as he had a goal of raising $14,000 for producing the Polar Pen. His target was to produce a few hundreds in his basement, but he reached his goal within a couple of days. His 60-second YouTube video showed him assembling the prototype. The video eventually went viral and he managed to collect $817,000.