By Kymberly Martin
To reduce danger to young children.
Major retailers including Officeworks, Coles, Woolworths and Aldi are supporting a new voluntary code intended to reduce the number of deaths and injuries from children swallowing button batteries. The button batteries are used to power a wide range of consumer products including remote controls, watches, cameras and TVs as well as being increasingly used in children’s toys and LED lights.
The Industry Code for Consumer Goods that Contain Button Batteries has been developed by a range of businesses with support from the ACCC and state regulators. Officeworks led development of the code with help from importers, manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers, industry associations, testing and standards and regulatory affairs businesses.
According to ACCC deputy chair, Delia Rickard, children under the age of five are at the greatest risk and it is vital that other businesses commit to the code in order to save lives. Every week in Australia 20 children are taken to emergency rooms after suspected exposure to button batteries.
“Unless the compartments containing the batteries are secured, 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,” Rickard said.
The code stipulates a number of safety mechanisms including that the product design means batteries are not accessible to young children; that the battery compartment or enclosure is secured and requires a tool to gain access or a battery compartment requires two or more simultaneous actions to remove its cover.
The code also encourages retailers to consider whether they sell goods containing coin sized lithium button batteries at all and, if they do, not to sell goods that don’t comply with the safety requirements in the code and also consider the height at which they sell button batteries to ensure they cannot be accessed by young children. Information must also be available at point of sale, including online, indicating that the product, or any included peripheral device, requires button batteries to operate and that these are hazardous to young children.