Use Button Battery Code, Urges ACCC

A three-part compliance requirement is part of an Industry Code for Consumer Goods that Contain Button Batteries made available September 19 by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC). It is aimed at reducing swallowing incidents among children. The steps involve:

• Ensuring that products and replacement battery packaging thwart children from accessing the batteries under normal use or reasonably foreseeable misuse.

 

• Having battery compartments with either captive screws needing tools to open or compartments needing two independent and simultaneous actions to open.

 

• Giving point-of-sale information that a product uses button batteries and on the risks to children. This includes online.

Excepted are professional products and medical devices like hearing aids. The code (bit.ly/2cTukKK) explains, however, batteries "must not be accessible when the device is subjected to normal use and reasonably foreseeable misuse and must also not be accessible without the use of a tool that would be expected to be used by a technician."

The document also gives suggestions for reducing risks to children including, "A primary consideration for your business should be whether you supply goods containing coin-sized lithium button batteries at all." It also urges product designs that ensure products will not operate unless battery compartments are properly secured.

For retailers, it suggests reviewing product lines to remove items that do not comply with the code and considering higher shelf placement for items with button batteries.