I don't care if I am. I could save your child's life

[batterychicken]

I am a colorectal surgeon and we have had to perform 5 emergency operations in 2 weeks related to button batteries but this is so far from the normal, it is increasing exponentially

If you suspect your child or elderly person with dementia or anyone with SEND and who has difficulty communicating has swallowed a button battery and I mean if you even notice the compartment on a battery operated toy or tea light is open and missing and you didn't see you child swallow it. GO IMMEDIATELY TO A&E button batteries and shiny, easy to grab for
Toddler and easy to confuse for tablets for elderly patients

If your child is over the age of 12 months old give 2 teaspoons of honey every 10 mins until you reach hospital. This is crucial and will coat the battery so it doesn't burn the oesophagus or intestines.

Yes it's not ideal if the child needs surgery but there are emergency procedures we can do to minimise risk of aspiration and the risk of aspiration of honey is less than the risk posed of the battery.

In the US, all energiser branded button batteries are coated to taste bitter and covered in a safe dye that dyes the tongue and mouth blue. This is being rolled out the Uk slowly but surely.

There are photos online portraying the damage that honey does to the battery on the slice of ham but it's not to be looked at because the whole point of the honey is to coat the battery and help it not stay too long in one place and move through the digestive tract.

I will also add these absolutely horrific orbeez things to this thread but really they need banning from the world.

If your nursery or child care provider uses them in sensory play, please tell them to stop or move child care providers (hard I know) but orbeez feel brilliant to children and when they have no taste so when they're exploring orally it's very very easy to eat them. And you can't see them on xray until they're a certain size and even then they look like built up gas in the bowel. Obviously if the child has ingested loads then they you see them. However if it's one or 2 they can be tiny when swallowed but they continue to expand and expand, they can case major bowel obstructions.

Please do this. No orbeez and keep and eye out for button batteries (god why are they in so many toys??!)

First photo is a button battery on ham for 30
Mins, second photos is an orbeez removed from
A child and the 3rd shows you how many much they can expand from
The original.

Don't let it impact your life but just keep it at the forefront

If this stops 1 more family from meeting me for surgery on their child then good!

I refuse to have button batteries in the house or objects that use them after seeing some truly horrible cases.

That is a good point!

My then 18month old swallowed a small dead button battery in 2021, they could see it in his stomach on x-ray and I was also advised to just check his nappy until he passed it (2 days later) as he wasn't showing any symptoms of it causing harm, but to bring him back immediately if he did start showing symptoms.

I refuse to buy my children orbeez or tiny magnet toys.

@batterychicken

I know honey isn't recommended under 12 months but I'd imagine if a battery is swallowed then honey is okay for younger babies? The risk of the battery negates any risk from the honey?

@Raberta i agree with you on a personal level and if a parent came in with an under 1 year old who had eaten a battery and they given honey I would completely understand why and agree with their decision. However on a forum as large as Mumsnet, anonymous as it is I can't really be telling patients families to give honey when not recommended by nice and it would have likely de railed the thread with people weighing in that honey is dangerous for babies and how someone's cousins, child minders daughters friend got botulism and I just wanted the focus to be on batteries x

I agree with you but I just didn't want the thread to descend into 'well honey is dangerous for babies too'

As a parent you can make that choice and I would agree with it wholeheartedly. As a hcp despite the fact I would also do it in a battery situation, I can't recommend that. But I do agree on a personal level with risk caused by the battery negates the risk of botulism

Problem is we can't do tests on children under 1 in medical studies Because it absolutely wouldn't be appropriate to do so in a clinical setting, and most parents of under 1s won't give them
Honey because of the guidelines around botulism, however I might mention to a colleague who is doing research this topic to see if a retrospective look at cases might help us to understand the risk of honey better. Thank you!

Thank you so much for this! Really appreciate your advice!

This is the kind of thing we should all be sharing. I've always been on edge about batteries in any case. The tip with the honey will be invaluable to someone who finds themselves in this awful situation.

Everyone with little ones be sure to have some in the cupboard! It's the season to keep stocked up in any case with coughs and cold going around.

Did the childminder ever work
out where the battery had come from??

This information is so important it should be on the national news and the government needs to create some action to spread awareness especially as I have read on here there are some nursery workers who are objecting to the concerns of some mums about the use button batteries.

I'm writing to my MP.......we all need to.

Good post OP, bumping so others can see.

Can I also tag on a warning - we take safety standards, and trading standards (concerning misleading descriptions etc) especially on toys, for granted, but with more and more cheap items on amazon etc coming direct from manufacturers in countries where there are very few checks on exported goods and then sold on by third parties who either don't know about safety standards, assume that the toy will conform to them, or don't care - you need to be vigilant of that yourself.

The model for this is absolutely rife because it is a supposedly "easy" way to make money. You know when you search something on amazon (say "dinosaur toy") and there will be a couple of expensive items by Schleich or Fisher Price or similar, and then lots of random brands you've never heard of with pictures of items which look almost identical but the price is about a quarter of the big name brands (or the same price with 10x as many items) - that's it. Those brands don't really exist, they are just randomly generated and the sellers are competing to be the cheapest item, because they know a lot of people will go OK, I want a dinosaur toy, and will just buy the cheapest thing which looks OK. But these products generally don't meet safety standards, which means plastics/foams used might contain heavy metals or carcinogenics, pieces may easily break off and be swallowable, electronics might not be correctly rated causing risk of fire, and batteries in particular may be too easy to remove.

If the product gets reported and removed, the seller just disappears and starts up a new profile with a new product. They likely don't have a real address and are often not based in the country they are selling in, so it's difficult for enforcement agencies to find them. So there is no deterrent because they are never held accountable.

These are what I look for to check if something is dodgy:

• Google the brand name. If the only result is that amazon listing and they don't have their own brand website or sell through any brick-and-mortar stores, that's a dead giveaway.
• If the post has the little square black brackets in it, that's a red flag.
• Photos will often be strange e.g. odd perspective, obviously photoshopped, or very obviously misleading sizing.
• Check for multiple errors in the English, especially on product photos.
• Promises claiming it is non-toxic or safe - this should be a given, so it's a bit suspicious when they tell you so.
• Claims of meeting safety standards generally without telling you which standard it conforms to.
• Several similar listings with products which look identical.
• Always read the negative reviews - positive ones are easily spoofed or paid for, but negative can be illuminating. Don't look at overall rating because there is way too much review spoofing happening.

Worth noting too - many websites like The Range and Decathlon now include "marketplace" type listings i.e. third party sellers alongside their own stock. So if you're ever on a website for an ordinary shop and you notice that they have e.g. thousands of results in a category where you'd expect maybe a few dozen or a couple of hundred, see if there is a filter option where you can choose to see only products sold directly by The Range or which are available in-store. That tends to screen out the junk.

They thought it could have been a watch or a car key?

We moved her to a nursery swiftly afterwards. To be fair, I wasn’t fully aware of the dangers so I didn’t blame her entirely. I remember walking into the children’s A&E at the second hospital and they had a huge display about the dangers of button batteries, I really did not know before it happened to us.

Couldn’t you use golden syrup, aka light treacle, instead of honey
for under 12 month olds or in the case of not having any honey? It has a similar consistency to honey.

Can confirm.

My late husband accidentally swallowed a hearing-aid battery, mistaking it for a Warfarin tablet. (His eyesight was really bad. )

I phoned NHS 24, and was passed to a nurse. She phoned back and told me to take him straight to A&E.

Fortunately, the x-ray showed that it wasn't in a place where it was going to stick and burn through and we were told just to let nature take its course.

Explanation: DH had macular degeneration, glaucoma and a cataract. Also left-side 'neglect' in one eye, following a stroke.

I found a dropped hearing aid battery. It still had the orange peel-off paper on the back, showing that it hadn't been used, so - idiot that I am - I put it on his table shiny side down.

He saw it and thought I'd given him a warfarin tablet to take. His tablets should have been pink or brown (as I recall). Even so, he mistook the orange for one of his tablets.

We were lucky.

Thank you for posting this and for your work x , I will share this with my daughter so she can share with her mum friends too

thank you I will be looking through toys and home accessories to check as my 4 year still puts things in her mouth

This is all really good advice

Thank you!
I too had never heard of orbeez.

Ask MN to run a campaign on this

Thank you for this!!

Thank you.

Had NO idea orbeez were dangerous thank you. Going to throw them out.

I thought my year old was well past the age of putting random stuff in her mouth when one day she swallowed a ball bearing. Fortunately not a battery but could have been! Best to be careful even with older children.

Thank you for this important information

Thank you, I was aware of button batteries being a risk but this has bought it home. I hadn't heard of Orbeez but definitely won't be buying any. I have shared the link with my dd.