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New button battery laws (Australia)

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Ed.Kloonk:

--- Quote from: Monkeh on June 21, 2022, 04:43:34 am ---I figured it was only a matter of time before james_s turned up to complain that his life is unduly hard again.

Personally I prefer screws. Screwed on battery covers stay there, rather than working their way to being loose after a while and promptly falling off. But I also don't bury my screwdrivers under concrete or need to constantly 'mess' with battery powered devices.

--- End quote ---

In a previous decade, I had a problem with a glouclometer (blood sugar checkerer) that only liked one brand of coin cell which had a wafer indent and any other cell with the same number either failed to make contact when the door was closed or prevented to the door from being closed.

The diabetes association eventually updated the thing to a later model. But it was a curse there for a while, having to keep a supply of spare good exact batteries just for the one device.  :--

As for screwing(!) if they must, I like to see a metal thread not just fastened into the plastic. And if they really want to warm my dead heart, make the screw that it cannot separate itself from the door. And hinge the door.  :blah:

BurningTantalum:
I work in a primary school and often find these coin cells are littered around. Many items are fitted with them (including BBC MicroBits).
I notice in my local store that coin cells are available on the rack that have some form of 'Bitrex' coating, to persuade anyone to spit out the item due to the vile taste. These cells were (3 months ago when I looked) more expensive than the plain tasting ones!

james_s:
Is there any data showing that helps? Very young children will eat laundry soap, toilet tablets and other vile tasting things if they have access to it, taste does not seem to be much deterrent. Sensible parents will lock up anything like that and keep an eye on their kids. It's common knowledge that very young children will put anything they can find in their mouth and they cannot be left unattended in the presence of anything they could get into.

tom66:
This article suggests that there are about 3,500 button-battery ingestion events per year in the USA, by children:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8223456/

of which around 3% have a "serious" outcome which includes fatalities. The rate is increasing, most likely due to the prevalence of button batteries increasing over time with smaller/lower power devices.

Preventing ingestion of these batteries seems like a worthwhile goal if it can be done with a few simple methods, like a screw door instead of a clip.  You don't necessarily need data on this point if you can deduce from an engineering analysis you've made it much more difficult for kids to get batteries.   Yes, being a good parent is important, but with 56% of cases being unwitnessed, even the best parenting couldn't prevent this.

james_s:
I'm asking for data on whether making them taste bad (at additional cost) is an effective deterrent.

I don't mind the presence of a screw, provided the battery door will still stay closed without the screw. That seems like a win-win situation, people with children can use a screw to secure the battery door, the rest of us can discard it if we choose and have easy access.

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