Cassandra Sterling of Pickering Ont. told CTV News Toronto Wednesday, her son swallowed the small battery on Aug. 2.
“When he swallowed it, he said, ‘I swallowed a coin.’ Then he said, “No, Mom, it was a battery.” After she swallowed it, she was crying and in pain,” Sterling said.
She described rushing her son, Akai, to Lakeridge Hospital in Ajax, where the boy was rushed by ambulance to The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.
“They told me they would have to do surgery straight away as the battery was lodged between his esophagus and stomach,” she said.
Brochure provided by Sterling Doctors were able to remove the small battery, but Akai was placed on a feeding tube for seven days and kept in hospital for ten days. It continues to be monitored. Lithium button batteries are about the size of a small coin and are used in many different devices such as musical greeting cards, remote controls, key fobs and toys. Akai had removed the button battery from an LED candle that Sterling had recently purchased. Sterling said she was “trying to be safer for my family by not buying candles that had a real flame.” According to the Canadian Hospitals Injury Reporting and Prevention Program (CHIRPP), an emergency room injury and poisoning surveillance system managed by Public Health Canada, received reports of 125 battery-related injuries in 2020. Between 2016 and 2019, an average of 114 cases per year were reported to CHIRPP. “Button batteries are everywhere these days,” Stephanie Cowle with Parachute Canada, a charity dedicated to injury prevention, said in an interview. If swallowed, button batteries can become stuck in a child’s throat, and the child’s saliva can cause an electrical current, causing a chemical reaction that can burn through the esophagus, trachea, and major artery. This may last as little as two hours, and even after the battery is removed, the severity of the burn may continue to worsen. “The acid starts to damage the tissue in your body, so it burns through the throat and esophagus and it can be potentially fatal, and it happens pretty quickly,” Cowle said. Last week, US President Joe Biden signed a bill called Reese’s Law, named after an 18-month-old girl who died after swallowing a button battery. Reese’s Law “would require child-resistant caps on consumer products … that use button or coin batteries.” Products with small screws make it much more difficult for children to access them. US law also requires companies to put clear warning labels on button batteries to keep them away from children and to seek immediate medical attention if swallowed. As for Sterling, she says she wants to warn other parents what could happen if you have button batteries in your home. “Just be very careful with the button batteries. They can be very dangerous, so please be careful.”
