New way to make batteries safer
Every year, nearly 4,000 children go to emergency rooms after swallowing button batteries — the flat, round batteries that power toys, hearing aids, calculators, and many other devices. Ingesting these batteries has severe consequences, including burns that permanently damage the esophagus, tears in the digestive tract, and in some cases, even death. To help prevent such injuries, researchers at MIT, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Massachusetts General Hospital have devised a new way to coat batteries with a special material that prevents them from conducting electricity after being swallowed. In animal tests, they found that such batteries did not damage the gastrointestinal (GI) tract at all. “We are all very pleased that our studies have shown that these new batteries we created have the potential to greatly improve safety due to accidental ingestion for the thousands of patients every year who inadvertently swallow electric components in toys or other entities,” says Robert...