Ontario boy hospitalized 10 days after accident with button battery

An Ontario mother is speaking out after an accident involving a lithium button battery left her four-year-old son hospitalized for 10 days.

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, mommy, it was a battery.’ After he ingested it, he was crying and in pain," Sterling said.

She described quickly taking 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 immediate surgery as the battery was lodged between his esophagus and his stomach,” she said.

Handout provided by Sterling

Doctors were able to remove the small battery, but Akai was put on a feeding tube for seven days and kept in hospital for ten days. He continues to be monitored.

Button lithium batteries are the size of a small coin and are used in many different devices like musical greeting cards, remotes, key fobs and toys.

Akai had removed the button battery from a L.E.D. candle that Sterling had recently purchased.

Sterling said she was “trying to be safer for my family by not purchasing candles that had a real flame.”

According to Canadian Hospitals Injury Reporting and Prevention Program (CHIRPP), an injury and poisoning emergency room surveillance system administered by the Public Health Agency of Canada, it received reports of 125 button-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 preventing injuries, said in an interview.

If swallowed, button batteries can become lodged in a child's throat and the child's saliva can trigger an electrical current, causing a chemical reaction that can burn through the esophagus, the windpipe and the main artery.

This can take as little as two hours and even after the battery is removed, the severity of the burn can continue to worsen.

“The acid starts to damage your body's tissue so it burns through the throat and esophagus and it can be potentially fatal and it happens quite quickly," Cowle said.

Last week, U.S. 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 will “require child-resistant closures on consumer products…that use button cell or coin batteries.”

Products with small screws make it much more difficult for children to access them. The U.S. law also states that companies must place clear warning labels on button batteries to keep them out of reach of 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 around button batteries. They can be very dangerous, so please, please be careful.”