‘Button’ Batteries Killing, Disabling Children is today’s parent panic.
Making the news is the warning of the dangers of children swallowing small batteries. Swallowing batteries, swallowing these small button batteries, can cause death, loss of voice, or the necessity for tube feeding when the battery leaks and burns through the esophagus,wind pipe or burns the vocal chords. This is the big parent alert playing on national and regional television.
Parents do need to be aware of this danger. But don’t overlook the fact that approximately two children a year will die from this and though the ultimate tragedy for those parents, that is out of 83 million children. There are about 350 cases a year but these include adult figures and usually the button battery just passes through the digestion system. Often the elderly will mistake a hearing aid battery for a pill and swallow it. With children, most of the time, the children actually remove the battery from a toy or appliance and swallow it.
Swallowing batteries is not a major threat to our children but swallowing foreign objects is. One in twenty toddlers goes to the emergency room from swallowing and poisoning. One in twenty! Don’t just think button batteries. In my book The Paranoid Parents Guide, I give a list of all the different poisons that our toddlers get into and the list runs for pages. Swallowing bad things and substances is one of the real child dangers.
Teach your children that nothing goes in his or her mouth except food approved by mom or dad or a grown-up. While panicking parents over button batteries has taken on scare-mongering tones, swallowing bad things is very common! Crawl around at your child’s eye level and see what you see. Pick up anything and everything unsuitable.
And nothing goes in the mouth, not fingers, not toys, not clothes. And it is worth the time to cut up grapes until the child is six.
24-hour National Battery Ingestion Hotline at 202-625-3333
