News story

New posters promoting button battery safety

New posters promoting button battery safety provide 5 top tips to keep children safe.

From:
Office for Product Safety and Standards
Published
29 April 2025
Last updated
1 May 2025 — See all updates

The Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) is sharing new posters which can be downloaded and shared by stakeholders to promote button battery safety and awareness.

These posters feature top tips that have been developed through collaboration with accident prevention charities, clinicians, manufacturers, online marketplaces and trade associations. See footnote 1.

They warn parents about the risks of button batteries and provide 5 top tips to keep children safe:   

  • Look around your home for button batteries. Think toys, lights, remote controls and more.
  • Check for products with loose backs and button batteries that have dropped out.
  • Store button batteries in a safe place, up high and out of your child’s reach.
  • Dispose of used button batteries as soon as you can. They are still unsafe.
  • Act if you think your child may have swallowed a button battery, go straight to A&E or call an ambulance.

Used button batteries should not be disposed of in the household rubbish. They should be dropped off for recycling at a collection point at a supermarket, or any other big shop that sells over 32 kg of batteries a year.

The 5 top tips are included in the updated Button Battery Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 7055:2025 developed by the British Standards Institution (BSI) with input from an expert steering group, which was published on 30 April.

Find out more about button battery safety – Child Accident Prevention Trust website

Download the PAS 7055:2025 – BSI website

Footnote

  1. The button battery top tips were produced by a working group chaired by the Child Accident Prevention Trust with representatives from Amazon, Amdea, Alibaba, British Retail Consortium, British and Irish Portable Battery Association, British Standards Institution, Chartered Trading Standards Institute, eBay, Electrical Safety First, Energizer, Etsy, OPSS and RoSPA and representatives from local authority trading standards services.

Updates to this page

Published 29 April 2025
Last updated 1 May 2025 show all updates

  1. Link added the updated Button Battery Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 7055:2025.

  2. First published.