Surgeons at London’s Great Ormond Hospital, the UK’s largest pediatrics center have issued a health warning about lithium penny batteries. They do not only look like coins. To small kids they could look like sweets to suck. If accidentally swallowed they cause serious burns in delicate places with unfortunately severe results.
What a Lithium Penny Battery Did to a Three-Year-Old Girl
In 2015, a three-year-old girl swallowed a lithium penny watch battery in Northern Ireland. Five days later, she became ill and started refusing food. When doctors x-rayed her, they found the battery had burned a hole through her esophagus into her windpipe affecting her ability to breathe and swallow. Her surgeon says, “button batteries should therefore be treated like poison and kept out of reach of children.”
Valerie has spent the last nine months in hospital receiving specialist treatment and having part of her esophagus removed.
She can no longer eat and drink properly, and uses tubes. Out of respect to sensitive visitors, we won’t go any further.
If you want to know more about this sad story, search for “button batteries pose ‘deadly’ risk to toddlers” on the BBC and keep children and sensitive viewers away from the video. We want to explain the problem, not shock.
How Lithium Penny Batteries Become Dangerous When Swallowed
Great Ormond Hospital reports an uptick in these incidents. They were rare ten years ago. Now they admit an average of a child a month.
The moist esophagus membrane surrounds the battery creating an electrical circuit and allowing the current to flow. There have been cases where one burned a hole through a main artery causing the child to bleed to death.
Until lithium penny battery manufacturers implement a 2014 child-proof lithium battery invention, our kids will be at risk. We can’t be everywhere but we can take precautions. Where do you keep your new penny batteries and how do you dispose of them?
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