Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Woolworths, Coles, Aldi, Energiser Australia and Officeworks are among major retailers who have adopted a new voluntary industry code designed to reduce the number of Australian children killed and injured after swallowing button batteries.
The Industry Code for Consumer Goods that Contain Button Batteries has been developed by a range of businesses, with support from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and state regulators.
The code comes in response to the 20 Australian children that are still taken to emergency rooms every week, after suspected exposure to button batteries.
"Children under the age of five are at the greatest risk," ACCC Deputy Chair Delia Rickard said.
"Once loose, children can easily mistake the batteries for lollies. This new Code is an important step towards ensuring children cannot access the batteries, thereby reducing the risk that they will swallow them."
The small disc-shaped batteries are used in everything from children's toys, to TV remote controls and kitchen scales. However, if swallowed, they can burn through an oesophagus and have previously killed two children in Australia, in 2013 and 2015.
The ACCC has spent the past two years leading a national strategy to improve the safety of products with button batteries.
The resulting industry code is intended to guide manufacturers, retailers, importers and online suppliers in their supply and use of button batteries, highlighting that in many cases, deaths and injuries "may have been prevented" if the device had a secured battery enclosure, or caregivers had known to store and dispose of new button batteries securely out of reach of children.
"This industry code is fantastic because the people involved are all the big retailers," Ms Rickard said.
"Right now the code is voluntary, and our hope is that by bigger suppliers driving quality we will see that filter through. But if at the end of two years we aren't seeing big changes, we will look at whether we need to implement regulation in the sector … I don't think this is an area where we can be complacent."
Two years ago Francesca Lever experienced her worst nightmare, when she found out her 9-month-old son Leo had swallowed a button battery, which remained lodged in his oesophagus for six days before it was identified.
The battery had been left on the kitchen bench after being removed from a bicycle light.
"We will live with that guilt for years and I am still horrified by how many people don't know the risks of not disposing of them," she told Fairfax Media in May this year.
Educating parents, as well as doctors, about the dangers of button batteries was a key purpose of the code, Ms Rickard said.
"A lot of doctors don't recognise the signs, so we are making sure they know the symptoms and getting common procedures in place."
In order to comply with the code, retailers and manufacturers must ensure products that require button batteries are designed so that the batteries are not accessible by young children.
The product must have a battery compartment that is secured, with a screw or bolt, or it must have a compartment that requires two or more independent and simultaneous actions to remove its cover.
The code also requires information to be available at the point of sale, in a store and online, indicating that the product requires button batteries and that they are hazardous to young children.
Retailers are encouraged to use child-resistant packaging marked with a warning, and to consider the height at which button batteries and products containing button batteries are displayed in stores.
"It's the message it sends about safety. Just like cigarettes and knives on high counters. It is important we have messaging in stores that these are unsafe products," Ms Rickard said.
