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AirTag Removable Battery Sparks Child Safety Concerns

This reminds me of Joey from friends:
Ups, Joey fell in the glass
Ups, Joey electrocuted himself again.


Seriously, child safety… what about those toys in the past that had a very loose plastic cover and dozens of batteries fell out?….
There’s child safety and there’s plain hysteria…
 
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thenahon said:
Of the 8 AirTags I have, only one is lose. All of the other 7 are in some sort of holder that would require dismantling. The Belkin keychain accessory is probably the "safest" given that you'd need to remove it from a key ring in order to gain access to the AirTag itself.
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This is absolutely not the case with the Belkin keychain! The battery can come out very easily while the AirTag is secured in the keychain:

forums.macrumors.com

AirTag came apart in my pocket

AirTag design flaw? It seems like the battery cover comes off much too easily! When I got home this evening and reached into my pocket for my keys, I found the AirTag battery cover and its battery had detached themselves.
forums.macrumors.com forums.macrumors.com
 
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Button batteries causing severe internal injuries to children is a major safety issue, and one that has been getting a lot of attention in Australia in recent years. Our federal government is in the middle of implementing tougher standards on all button battery devices. Read this news article for an overview:

https://www.smh.com.au/national/saf...e-risk-to-small-children-20201221-p56pbq.html

and for the tragic examples of child deaths in this country:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-15/button-batteries-landmines-in-the-loungeroom/13041928?nw=0
 
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Marbles1 said:
So if you lose your keys you should keep an eye on your kids....?

They just need to put a safety warning on the box that they're not suitable for under 3's.

They do this in the UK - anything intended for use 'around children' has a screw or an especially secure method of sealing the battery door.

Can anyone confirm how easy it is to get the battery out?
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In the US this is done by someone’s addled child breaking this open and eating the battery and then suing the company for a trillion dollars and the lawyers becoming millionaires and the family gets $100 and then we get a warning label that is unnecessary for 99.99999% of the population. Everything here has a warning label because juries and judges cannot accept common sense as a sufficient warning.
 
Stuart in Oz said:
Button batteries causing severe internal injuries to children is a major safety issue, and one that has been getting a lot of attention in Australia in recent years. Our federal government is in the middle of implementing tougher standards on all button battery devices. Read this news article for an overview:

https://www.smh.com.au/national/saf...e-risk-to-small-children-20201221-p56pbq.html

and for a tragic example:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-15/button-batteries-landmines-in-the-loungeroom/13041928?nw=0
Click to expand...
There are always tragic examples. It’s not worth changing things to protect against events this rare. The myriad way people have rare injuries exceed the utility of any laws. Sometimes bad things are going to happen and the cost of trying to prevent them all imposes an irrational burden on the rest of society.
 
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jimbobb24 said:
There are always tragic examples. It’s not worth changing things to protect against events this rare.
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It's not that rare. More than 3500 incidents are reported every year to the National Poison Centre in the USA. In Queensland, Australia, there are around 4 hospital admissions per week:

Button batteries – The dangers of button batteries and how to stay safe – Home Safety - RoSPA

Button batteries can cause many dangers to your family, our website shares with you information to keep children safe from button batteries and what to do if an accident occurs.
www.rospa.com www.rospa.com
 
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locksmack said:
This.

I’ll reiterate that many in this thread appear to be childless. In the real world, kids are a total wildcard and no matter how on the ball you are as a parent, it’s simply not possible to stay on top of them every second.

I was surprised how easy it was to pop the battery out of the airtag. Like another poster, my first thought was ‘I need to keep this away from my kid’.

What if a family member is at my house and gives my keys to the kid (a common thing that people give babies to play with) and aren’t aware of the attached airtag?
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I have children. Even given all these risks child battery events are too rare to make changes to the design. As a cause of death they are dwarfed by many many other accidents that happen in with common house hold items. Kids cause themselves all sorts of problems with everything imaginable despite attentive parents. Trying to make everything risk free is impossible, irrational, and philosophically suspect. Reasonable measures have been taken and that’s all that should be done.

I think hearing politicians saying idiot things like “if it saves even one life” has made people collectively numb to trade offs. Nearly everything has some risk. Mitigate high probability things and prepare as reasonable for low probability things.
 
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Reason077 said:
It's not that rare. More than 3500 incidents are reported every year to the National Poison Centre in the USA. In Queensland, Australia, there are around 4 hospital admissions per week:

Button batteries – The dangers of button batteries and how to stay safe – Home Safety - RoSPA

Button batteries can cause many dangers to your family, our website shares with you information to keep children safe from button batteries and what to do if an accident occurs.
www.rospa.com www.rospa.com
Click to expand...
Compared to...what? Numbers out of context are meaningless. Where does that rank on reported events? Where does it rank on hospital admissions for that age range. Large populations having what appear to be large numbers doesn’t make them common.
 
jimbobb24 said:
Kids cause themselves all sorts of problems with everything imaginable despite attentive parents. Trying to make everything risk free is impossible, irrational, and philosophically suspect.
Click to expand...

Yes, there are always risks. But this doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to produce safer products. No doubt the AirTag design can be improved to make it safer for children without impeding its functionality or significantly increasing cost.

To argue otherwise is much like the arguments that were once used against putting seatbelts or air bags in cars. Why should a safe driver be forced to use a seat belt? Driving still has risks even with seat belts!
 
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Kissmo1980 said:
This reminds me of Joey from friends:
Ups, Joey fell in the glass
Ups, Joey electrocuted himself again.


Seriously, child safety… what about those toys in the past that had a very loose plastic cover and dozens of batteries fell out?….
There’s child safety and there’s plain hysteria…
Click to expand...
What about the dangerous toys of the past? Well, what happened was that some kids were hurt and/or killed by them, and so tighter rules and safety standards were introduced to try and prevent that from happening in the future. Why is this cause and effect difficult for people to understand?
 
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