If you are changing a button battery in a device while in a public place, take care what happens to the old one. That’s because battery safety does not only matter at home with small kids. The button battery danger is present anywhere children and these batteries come together. And that includes a public park on a sunny Spring morning.
When the Button Battery Danger Lurked
A seven-year-old boy was playing in a public park in Salt Lake City, Utah, while his nanny watched him from a short distance away. She did not know that someone careless left a shiny disc lying on the ground ahead of him. But young the lad spotted it, and popped it in his mouth to see if it had any charge left.
Tyla News website describes how the seven-year-old boy rolled it on his tongue. And then suddenly without warning the shiny disc was gone! Fortunately the lad realized he had swallowed a button battery, and knew enough to tell his nanny.
The nanny rushed him to his home, where his mum unsuccessfully tried to get him to vomit the penny button up. And so she rushed her child to the Salt Lake City’s Primary Children’s Hospital instead, where emergency personnel understood the button battery danger was far from over.
How Good Parenting Saved a Child
The boy’s mother later remembered, “Luckily, because we have spoken about the dangers of button batteries, the lad told the nanny straight away. And then she called me and then he came home … and it was more worrying.”
The trauma rapidly escalated to an emergency as the boy began experiencing pain. The young lad survived thanks to liberal doses of honey to temporarily isolate the battery. Hospital staff removed it successfully, but he was unable to swallow solids for five weeks.
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