DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — Ahead of the holiday season getting fully into swing, doctors are warning metro Atlanta area parents about the dangers of children swallowing batteries.
Channel 2’s Tom Regan was at the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Arthur M. Blank Hospital in DeKalb County, where he learned the number of cases of children ingesting batteries is rising.
It’s becoming more common for children to swallow what are called button batteries, and if they do, it can be extremely harmful and even deadly.
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Getting a child to the hospital after they swallow a battery is vitally important.
In 2023, six-year-old Beckett Johnson accidentally swallowed a button battery while playing with a window blind remote control. His mother Laura told Channel 2 Action News about the scary experience.
“I got a call from my husband that Beck had swallowed a button battery,” she told Regan. “Luckily my husband and I had discussed button battery ingestions that were really dangerous, rushed him to CHOA [Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta] and they were able to remove it, but there was quite a bit of damage done while it was inside him.”
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Nationally, thousands of children swallow button batteries each year. It’s especially dangerous because when the battery mixes with saliva or moist skin tissue, it can set off an alkaline chemical that can burn the child.
“Within 15 minutes that child can start getting injury to their esophageal tissue,” Dr. Manessah Agarwal, at Children’s, said. “You can have major damage that can be life-threatening.”
Agarwal said parents need to make sure button batteries are well-secured in devices in a way that they cannot be removed by children.
Johnson told Channel 2 Action News that her son had to spend two weeks at the hospital to let his esophagus heal, but now he’s fully recovered.
“He’s doing wonderfully now, he fully healed,” Johnson said. “He’s seven-years-old now and has no lasting impacts.”
Agarwal says she has small children and takes no chances when she replaces a button battery. She said she wraps tape around it and puts it in the trash outside her house.
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