Button and coin cell batteries: disposal and child safety

Last verified 2026-09-30

If you suspect a child has swallowed or inserted a button battery, act immediately.

• Call Triple Zero (000) immediately if your child is bleeding or having any difficulty breathing.
• Call the Poisons Information Centre on 13 11 26 immediately — 24 hours a day.

The ACCC’s instructions are: do not wait for symptoms to develop, do not let the child eat or drink, and do not induce vomiting. If you suspect it, ask for an X-ray at a hospital emergency department.

Follow any instructions the Poisons Information Centre gives you.

This page leads with that because the ACCC’s own pages do, and because the timeline is short. A swallowed button battery can cause serious injury in as little as two hours, and the damage keeps going even after the battery is removed.

Which ones are the dangerous ones

A button or coin battery is a flat, round single cell that’s wider than it is tall: typically up to 32 mm across and between 1 and 11 mm thick. They come in four chemistries: lithium, alkaline, silver oxide and zinc-air.

The ACCC is direct about which matters most:

Lithium batteries pose the highest risk. They are usually larger, which means that they are more likely to become stuck in a child’s throat. Their higher voltage means they can cause tissue damage more quickly. — ACCC Product Safety, Button and coin batteries mandatory standards

What the battery does if it’s swallowed

The injury isn’t choking, and it isn’t poisoning in the way people expect. If the battery lodges in a child’s throat, saliva triggers an electrical current, and that current sets off a chemical reaction that burns the oesophagus and can reach the arteries, lungs, heart, larynx and spine. Serious injury can happen in as little as two hours, and once the burning starts it continues after the battery is out. Repairing it may take multiple surgeries and ongoing treatment over many years.

Children up to five years of age are at greatest risk, because of a narrower oesophagus and a habit of putting small objects in their mouths, ears and noses. Insertion into an ear or nose causes serious injuries too.

Three children have died in Australia from incidents involving button batteries, and many more have been seriously injured.

A flat battery is still dangerous. It has enough charge left to do all of this, which is why the disposal steps below matter.

Symptoms, if you didn’t see it happen

Children often can’t tell you. The ACCC lists these:

gagging or choking · drooling · chest pain, which presents as grunting · coughing or noisy breathing · unexplained vomiting or food refusal · bleeding from the gut, meaning black or red vomit or bowel motions · nose bleeds, sometimes blood vomited through the nose · unexplained fever · abdominal pain · general discomfort · spitting blood or blood-stained saliva · bloody discharge from an ear or nose.

If you suspect a button battery, say so and ask for an X-ray. Don’t wait to see whether symptoms develop.

How to get rid of them

The ACCC’s disposal instruction is specific, and it does two jobs at once: it makes the battery harder to swallow, and it stops it sparking.

1. Tape both sides as soon as you take it out. Sticky tape around both faces. You can build a row of several batteries in a single strip of tape. The ACCC suggests exactly that, because a taped row is much harder for a child to get into their mouth.
2. Put the taped batteries in a child-resistant container, out of reach. Not the kitchen drawer, not a pocket, and not the bin in the bathroom.
3. Take them to a battery drop-off point.

B-cycle’s version of step one is the same, with the emphasis on fire: button battery terminals are on the base, and should be covered in clear tape on all sides. Bunnings asks for tape on the top and bottom face. Use clear tape if you can, so the code stays readable.

Change them on a flat surface, away from children. A dropped coin cell rolls somewhere you can’t reach.

Where they’re accepted

Button batteries are accepted through B-cycle, the national battery scheme, and are named specifically by these retailers:

• Supermarkets. Woolworths takes “all handheld batteries regardless of type or brand, including button batteries”. Coles names button cell batteries used in watches, cameras, toys, clocks and other small devices. ALDI names button batteries from watches and hearing aids.
• Hardware. Bunnings names button cell batteries and has the tape instructions to match.
• The B-cycle drop-off finder has a Button Batteries filter if you want to confirm a specific location before you go.

They do not go in any household bin. The NSW EPA’s advice is never to bin a battery: one battery in a bin can spark a fire.

If you’re taking anything else on the same trip, check what each bin actually accepts before you go.

What the law requires, and what it doesn’t

Four mandatory standards for button and coin batteries (two safety, two information, covering both the batteries and the products that contain them) became enforceable on 22 June 2022. The ACCC described them at the time as world-first.

What they require of suppliers:

• Secure battery compartments on products, so children can’t get the battery out.
• Child-resistant packaging for the batteries themselves: packaging you need scissors to open.
• Warnings and emergency advice on the batteries, the packaging and the instructions.
• Compliance testing. Suppliers must ensure products have been compliance tested.

Some things sit outside them: batteries supplied in bulk to trades and industry, button batteries soldered into audio-visual and IT equipment, professional equipment that will be used in trades, professions or industries and won’t be sold to the public or used where children are present, and private second-hand sales between consumers. Zinc-air hearing aid batteries only have to meet the information standard, not the safety standard.

And there’s one gap to know about, in the ACCC’s own words: the standards don’t define any requirements for disposing of or recycling batteries. They recommend suppliers provide disposal information, but nothing obliges them to. That gap is a big part of why this page exists.

Where they are in your house

If you have small children, it’s worth ten minutes with a torch: remote controls, watches, computers, cameras, calculators, torches, fitness devices, musical greeting cards, digital kitchen scales, thermometers and other home medical devices. And in toys: plush toys, toy cars, digital pets, early-learning watches, light-up yo-yos, games and musical books.

The ACCC’s advice for households with young children is blunter than most product guidance gets: where you can, avoid products with button batteries altogether, and where you can’t, buy the ones with a compartment a child can’t open. Check the compartments on what you already own. A battery compartment that’s been dropped a few times isn’t the compartment it was.