A new button battery dyes kids’ mouths blue if swallowed

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2024-04-26 22:30:04

By Andrew Paul | Published Apr 26, 2024 11:42 AM EDT

Energizer has designed a new lithium coin battery that releases a blue dye immediately upon interacting with moisture such as saliva. The marker offers parents a visible way to determine if their children accidentally swallowed one of these toxic products.

After two decades of steady integration into everything from key fobs and remote controls to cooking thermometers and smart watches, lithium button batteries are now extremely commonplace household items. Unfortunately, their ubiquity coincides with a major, ongoing spike in the number of children ingesting the small batteries. Over 70,300 emergency doctor visits were reported for children’s battery-related issues between 2010 and 2019. Of those, nearly 85 percent involved button batteries.

Apart from the choking hazard, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission warns a battery’s chemicals can cause severe bodily injury, and even death, within a matter of hours if ingested. Additionally, the electric current generated by saliva’s interactions with a battery can simultaneously burn through body tissue, leading to even more potentially lethal complications. Every year, thousands of emergency hospital visits occur because of ingesting batteries.