![]() ![]() Parents should keep all batteries locked and out of sight of young children, Mr. “Toddlers throw them against walls, or the floor, and the compartments pop open.” “The big worry now is consumer electronic devices, like remote controls,” echoed Dr. The toy industry has already embraced voluntary standards requiring locking mechanisms on battery compartments, so other household devices may pose a more serious threat. Jacobs encouraged parents to go through their homes and check which electronic devices contain button batteries so they can keep them out of children’s reach. Even after that point, families are likely to still have older electronic devices lying around.ĭr. He noted, however, that manufacturers have a year to comply with the new regulations. Jacobs, who is co-chair of a button battery task force created by the American Broncho-Esophagological Association and American Academy of Pediatrics. “I think we’ll start to see the curve bend a little bit, but it will take time,” said Dr. Ian Jacobs, medical director of the Center for Pediatric Airway Disorders in the Division of Otolaryngology at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said he believed the new law would help reduce the number of battery-related injuries and emergency department visits. Known as Reese’s Law, it was named in honor of Reese Hamsmith, an 18-month-old child who died in December 2020 after she swallowed a button battery from a remote control.ĭr. In August, President Biden signed into law a bill that strengthens safety standards for products with button batteries, requiring that they carry a warning label to keep the batteries out of children’s reach and ensuring they have child-resistant battery compartments. You are in an emergency situation to get the battery out, and super worried about the damage being done.” “So for pediatric gastroenterologists, otolaryngologists, pediatric surgeons and anesthesiologists - the teams that get these batteries out of the esophagus - these ingestions are really scary. “Serious damage to tissue can occur in a matter of hours,” Dr. David Brumbaugh, an associate professor of pediatrics with the University of Colorado School of Medicine who did not work on the new study. “The most common button batteries used in readily available household devices are about the size of a quarter, which is a perfect size to get stuck in the esophagus,” said Dr. The data in the new study did not provide detailed information on patient outcomes, but 12 percent of the children who were taken to the emergency department required hospitalization, most because of ingestion. Swallowing a button battery is dangerous because the battery generates an electric current when it comes into contact with bodily fluids like saliva that can burn through a child’s body tissue and lead to life-threatening complications or even death. “Parents may not realize that certain products in their home are powered by button batteries and are often unaware of the ingestion risk batteries pose,” said Mark Chandler, the study’s lead author and a senior research associate at Safe Kids Worldwide, a nonprofit that works to combat childhood injury.
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