Button batteries pose deadly risks to children. Doctors want them to be made safer

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The round batteries, small as buttons and shiny as coins, are prized for the energy they pack at their size. In households, they have become commonplace, powering remote controls, hearing aids, toys, electric tea lights, wristwatches, greeting cards that play music and other familiar items.

But doctors warn that such “button batteries” can maim and kill. Pop one into your mouth and swallow — as thousands of children do annually — and they can quickly cause devastating injuries.

A growing number of medical associations are pushing for battery manufacturers to head off the threat by making a new product: A button or “coin cell” battery that will not lead to catastrophic injuries when swallowed.

“The only real solution to the battery problem is to make the battery itself safer,” said Dr. Toby Litovitz, founder of the National Capital Poison Center.

When button batteries are lodged in the body, their electrical current breaks down water, driving up alkalinity to dangerous levels akin to bleach. Bodily tissues can begin to liquefy. Physicians say serious injury can happen within two hours, sometimes before a parent has realized that a battery was swallowed.

As button batteries have proliferated in common items, the rate of pediatric emergency visits for battery-related injuries has more than doubled in recent decades, according to a study published in the journal Pediatrics. Some children have ended up relying on tubes to breathe or suffered massive hemorrhaging, doctors said.

“Unfortunately, these batteries cause such severe injuries so rapidly,” some of which are impossible for surgeons to repair, said Dr. Kris Jatana, surgical director of clinical outcomes at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio.

Jatana became alarmed by the risks after caring for a 2-year-old who ended up needing a tracheostomy to breathe. “It was a moment that motivated me to try to see what we could do to prevent these injuries from happening in the first place.”

Button battery safety

Here are recommendations from Nationwide Children’s Hospital:

Some battery manufacturers have tried adding bitter coating or saliva-activated dye to tip off parents.

Reese’s Law , a federal statute named for a child who died of serious injuries after swallowing a button battery, now requires compartments for such batteries on consumer products to be harder to … Read More