IJCEMR
Button Batteries and Child Deaths: Market Failure of Unsafe Products
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Abstract
Button batteries can be lethal if ingested and not promptly excreted or removed. These batteries are present in a multitude of household items including car remotes, IT devices, and many consumer items targeted at children. There are various technologies available for button batteries and they are produced in various sizes. Lithium button batteries with a diameter of 20mm or more pose the greatest risk. Most at risk are children of 0-5 years. At this age, there is a propensity to put foreign objects in the mouth. These batteries once swallowed, rather than passing through the alimentary canal and being excreted, may lodge in the oesophagus where they will burn through tissue, sometimes trough to the trachea, sometimes through to the aorta. This will be fatal for the child if the problem is not promptly identified and the battery then promptly extracted. Death will follow within several weeks of ingestion, following episodes of ill health, if the problem is not recognised. The presenting symptoms of ill health by the child can be misdiagnosed as food poisoning, a virus, an infection, or some common malady. Three child deaths in Australia from ingested button batteries (all 20mm lithium) are reported in the present paper. In each case, after prior misdiagnoses, the ingested battery was detected by X-ray, and, in each case, too late for successful intervention. Ingested button batteries can be detected by X-ray or ultrasound, but they may be indistinguishable from an ingested coin, which present less risk and are not actively corrosive. A new safety standard in Australia seeks to reduce the access of children to button batteries. The standard accepts the design status quo of button batteries, and seeks to avoid their misuse, in particular to stop them being ingested by young children. This is a safety-by-regulation approach. The alternative is a safety-by-design approach where the onus is on product designers to engineer safety into and danger out of the product. The twin problems of lithium button batteries are, firstly, their size where they are small enough to be easily swallowed by children but large enough to lodge in the oesophagus (where they are ≥20mm in diameter), and secondly, their bio-reactivity with flesh, which is partly a matter of chemistry but also partly a matter of the surface areas of the electrodes (which are extensive surfaces rather than point electrodes).
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How to cite this paper
Button Batteries and Child Deaths: Market Failure of Unsafe Products
How to cite this paper: John Paull. (2021) Button Batteries and Child Deaths: Market Failure of Unsafe Products. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Medicine Research, 5(3), 297-303.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/ijcemr.2021.07.011
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