Australian Regulator Says Apple's AirTag Batteries Are Too Easy For Kids To Access (theverge.com) 94
Australia's Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has warned buyers to keep Apple AirTags away from young children, saying it's too easy to remove a potentially dangerous battery from the tiny location trackers. The Verge: An ACCC statement cautions that AirTags' small lithium button batteries can severely injure children if they leak or become stuck in a child's throat, nose, or ear. It raises particular concerns about Apple's design making those batteries too readily accessible: "The ACCC is concerned that the AirTag's battery compartment could be accessible to young children, and the button battery removed with ease. In addition, the AirTag battery compartment's lid does not always secure fully on closing, and a distinctive sound plays when an AirTag's lid is being closed, suggesting the lid is secure when it may not be."
As 9to5Mac notes, Australian retailer Officeworks removed AirTags from its shelves last month, citing safety concerns. Apple has since added a new warning label to AirTag packaging, and the ACCC quotes Apple as saying that AirTags are "designed to meet international child safety standards." The agency states that it's currently discussing safety issues with Apple. [...] Australia recently introduced new, stricter overall safety rules for devices using button batteries, and Apple isn't the only company in the ACCC's sights. Its statement says that it's "assessing whether there are issues with button battery safety in similar Bluetooth tracking devices," and companies that don't meet the new standards will have until June 2022 to comply.
As 9to5Mac notes, Australian retailer Officeworks removed AirTags from its shelves last month, citing safety concerns. Apple has since added a new warning label to AirTag packaging, and the ACCC quotes Apple as saying that AirTags are "designed to meet international child safety standards." The agency states that it's currently discussing safety issues with Apple. [...] Australia recently introduced new, stricter overall safety rules for devices using button batteries, and Apple isn't the only company in the ACCC's sights. Its statement says that it's "assessing whether there are issues with button battery safety in similar Bluetooth tracking devices," and companies that don't meet the new standards will have until June 2022 to comply.
Irony (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was a kid (several years back), that "protect the kids against anything possible" mentality didn't exist. Don't get me wrong, of course any civilized human should protect their kids as much as possible. It just seem to me that we kind of gave up some on making kids autonomous as early as possible with that latest trend.
I sometimes chat about how things have changed with my 90 years old mother and we have good laughs about how my parents would have quickly been incarcerated nowadays for all they would let us do, with supervision of course and for all the pranks they would play on us. Again, don't get me wrong, I had very good parents.
It's just that things have changed a lot I guess...
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I had several vaccines as a kid. My mother was a nurse.
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Re:Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Irony (Score:4, Insightful)
Then again, what about establish trust with your kids at a very early age and teach them that an airtag battery isn't something that is good for them to eat?
you obviously do not have kids
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There weren't so many things with these button batteries back in those days. This is legislature keeping up with changes and the rising number of horrific injuries that have occurred.
As any parent knows, things can happen very quickly with children, even if you're actively supervising or engaged with them. I am happy that there are basic safety precautions being forced on manufacturers. I'm sure that if I had AirTags that I'd have to keep an eye on my son to make sure he doesn't swallow the damn thing an
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That's generally how engineering works in many cases. Stuff gets designed accounting for known failure modes. Some new failure modes are discovered, and the next generation tries to mitigate those too. Everything gets safer over time.
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Everything gets safer over time.
With the exception of guns: one end got safer, which made the other end more dangerous. Of course the other end’s business is making things it’s pointed at as unsafe as possible, so this isn’t considered a design flaw unless you’re one of those things.
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Easy fix, glue the case together and solder the battery in!
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Easy fix, glue the case together and solder the battery in!
But then they will need to buy another $30 device when the battery goes bad. That’s a terrible busine.... excuse me I need to buy some stock, brb.
Re:Irony (Score:5, Interesting)
The minute the battery touches the child's tongue it creates such a foul taste they will spit it out and probably never try putting a battery in their mouths again.
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Was going to suggest this. It's one of those things that costs very little to implement and should really be made mandatory, although there may be issues with patents at the moment.
Patent protection of safety equipment is something we should look into a change in the law for. While obviously we want people who develop safety technology to be compensated, it would also be good if safety wasn't a premium feature only available to people with deep pockets.
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Was going to suggest this. It's one of those things that costs very little to implement and should really be made mandatory
Why? You say cost very little, but why do we need the cost at all? A child won't disassemble my computer and get the battery out of my motherboard just so they can swallow it. Why should that little incremental cost apply in that scenario?
If you're going to apply something to every scenario then make sure the problem you're mitigating applies at the very least to most scenarios. With these batteries it doesn't. It's trivial to design a compartment that is difficult to open. It's just Apple has forgotten thi
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A quick bit of googling suggests around 3,500 battery swallowing incidents a year in the US. They are serious events and the child should receive emergency medical treatment. Small magnets too.
If the cost is extremely low, and batteries are often sold at a premium anyway, it seems worth doing. I.e. it's all about cost/benefit.
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Wouldn't it be easier to outlaw small batteries and small magnets? No wait, that's just crazy talk. What we need to do is outlaw small children. As a bonus, in less than two decades all problems about small children will be eliminated as well.
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And a bit of googling will show that kids swallow switch cartridges as well. The thing is, we know how to design compartments which are not openable by a toddler. TFA mentions that Apple's competitor doesn't have this problem. Also design based laws targeting products which already need certification are easier to implement compared some potential coating.
That battery you just bought from Hong Chin Su, a 5 star rated Amazon seller, did you taste test it? Would you taste test all of them? Quite a bit easier
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Duracell makes a 2032 battery
Except that it's a 2032 battery with no way of ensuring the batteries will always be Duracell. Unless you want to mandate all batteries have this coating which is stupid given how hard many are to access.
Easier answer: Mandate Apple actually design a safe product just like every other company.
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Duracell makes a 2032 battery with a bitter taste coating on it ... The minute the battery touches the child's tongue it creates such a foul taste they will spit it out and probably never try putting a battery in their mouths again.
My 3 year old ate a worm. Not saying the coating isn't a great idea, but it's not fool proof... I mean, child proof.
I had to taste one of those batteries the first time I saw one. They do taste pretty bad. It will save little lives.
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Here is a video showing just how easy it actually is:
https://www.macworld.com/artic... [macworld.com]
You're right, it's kind of weird from Apple.
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That's ridiculous.
They couldn't afford a couple of screws to make it child proof?
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I'm not sure if the video is broken or if MacWorld hates my ad blocker. So all I could see is the text:
That looks pretty much bog-standard for replacing a button cell in most other
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"But then, it's Apple. So I guess it's the typical knee-jerk"
Kind of ... at least the ACCC are not keyboard warriors or Apple-haters bored on social media, they're a serious and powerful consumer advocate. So in this case I think we can take them as not expressing some kind of anti-Apple bias, they're just doing their job. But for sure, I would hope and expect they are giving this same scrutiny to any other kind of product with similar issues, and if they are not then that's stupid.
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An Apple product that's too easy to take apart? Well that's certainly good for a laugh.
Yeah, and now Apple has a new excuse - "we can't make our stuff more repairable because it's too dangerous. Think of the children."
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Keep those glasses and plates away from kids (Score:2)
They might break them and eat the shards.
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Come back to us after you've had a toddler eat a button cell battery and it explodes in their stomach. This is not an uncommon event. What surprises me is that it's still relatively common in teenagers an adults, https://www.poison.org/battery... [poison.org]
In 2019, there were 3,467 ingestions out of a population of 331 million. 1,715 of those had no effect, fortunately resulting in no harm.
Work out the percentage for that. Yeah, it is uncommon. Quite uncommon when you consider harm from every other activity that children and adults participate in on a daily basis that we don't even blink an eye towards.
Let's also not overlook the fact that 10% of the population holds an IQ of 83 or less. Statistically should we really be surprised regarding ingestion amon
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They might break them and eat the shards.
You must not have kids. I do. Button cell batteries are scary as fuck. And I am not a helicopter parent.
Haven't you heard? (Score:1)
Hey ACCC..haven't you heard? Gotta keep grandchildren away from every hard-of-hearing grandparent wearing those child-killer hearing aides. I'm sure those spare battery discs look like a cookie to a kid. New law says you gotta have a gun safe to secure them.
It's like safety got nerfed.
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Yeah, I'm a parent of a 3 year old kid and I absolutely make sure my kids are not messing with their grandparent's devices
Wait a minute... (Score:2)
Swallowing a CR2032, I can easily see young children doing that.
But sticking it in their ears? I'm a grown adult and I couldn't do that even if I tried. Are Australian ear canals that much bigger than ours in Canada?!
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A CR2032 is 20mm across. Even an adult will have trouble swallowing that.
Took my kid to the ER last week (Score:2)
Got a call from his daycare facility there was a small chance that he had swallowed a button battery. Turns out he didn't but every professional involved from the daycare provider to the authorities and everyone at the hospital took it 100% seriously. Regardless of what might actually happen there is now significant awareness around this as a genuine risk. That means if any manufacturer brings out a product that can lead to even the question of a kid putting a battery in their mouth then it's a problem. App
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Walking the line between too easy and people complaining about it being too hard. Mail the old one in and get a new one back.
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It can be lethal in the nastiest fucking way.
A large unrepairable perforation(s) of their gastrointestinal tract.
It's like being shot in the fucking guts. Having to die is one thing... Having to do it in excruciating pain? No thanks.
Having to watch your child die in excruciating pain because they ate a fucking battery that are known to be deadly?
Ya.
To anyone bitching about "back in my day...", go fucking die in a fire.
Darwin didn't do good work by letting a fu
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A CR2032 is 20mm across. Taking it in their mouth? Yes. Swallowing it? Unless it is MonsterChild, no chance.
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Seriously? 20mm is _large_. Got a reference?
This would also mean regular coins are a permanent serious threat to children.
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At 3.2V? Seriously? It will not. There will be almost no current flowing. This is probably an urban myth created by those that do not understand the basics of electricity.
Incidentally, here is a triage guide for battery ingestion: https://www.poison.org/battery... [poison.org]
Note that the problem is not that it is a battery. The problem is that it can get stuck in the throat. Also note that it says if it is still in the stomach after 4 days (!) to remove it endoscopically.
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The problem is that it gets stuck in the throat, and creates a super caustic environment, and burns holes through your throat, or causes the body to create fistulas connecting your aorta to your upper stomach/esophagus, and then you exsanguinate.
The problem is the battery.
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So why is having it for 4 days in your stomach or having it pass through your intestines OK then? No, this must be some other effect.
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So why is having it for 4 days in your stomach or having it pass through your intestines OK then? No, this must be some other effect.
It's not. It's less likely to cause a problem, though.
There are far less cases of bad results once it's past the esophagus, but the big documented one is quite bad- Gastro-aortic fistula, rapid exsanguination, days after ingestion, while it was somewhere in the patient's lower stomach. Gastro-aortic fistulas are an uncommon severe complication of certain serious ulcers.
My guess is the battery is more dangerous in the esophagus, because it isn't lined with cells that are literally designed to be bathed in
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This [poison.org] indicates it's the electricity in the battery. It alkalizes the water in the saliva it's in contact with until it's at levels that are caustic.
That would give a hint as to why it's less likely to be a problem if it makes it your stomach as well- any alkali produced would generally be neutralized by gastric acid.
Perhaps the child that suffered the death after it was in their stomach had some kind of disorder where they had low stomach acid.
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Start here. [poison.org]
Yes, small children *can* swallow a 2cm battery.
The voltage isn't what's dangerous, that's silly. It's the battery fucking exploding because of the electrochemical environment it ends up in, which does not always happen, but when it does, it's horrific.
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Some sacrifices have to be made I guess.
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Thats 2cm. If you think a child cant swallow something 2cm in size, you've clearly never raised a child.
For reference doctors are semi-regularly fishing items larger than that out of children.
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CR2032s are dangerous precisely because they are this size and shape. They are absolutely able to be swallowed and yet once they get into a kids throat they can get stuck part way down. Smaller batteries like an LR1130 are not nearly so dangerous since they can much more easily pass through all the parts of the digestive system.
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Got a call from his daycare facility there was a small chance that he had swallowed a button battery. Turns out he didn't but every professional involved from the daycare provider to the authorities and everyone at the hospital took it 100% seriously. Regardless of what might actually happen there is now significant awareness around this as a genuine risk. That means if any manufacturer brings out a product that can lead to even the question of a kid putting a battery in their mouth then it's a problem. Apple should be beyond this. If it's as easy as suggested then this is a design SNAFU and they should fix it.
First off, as a parent, I'm very thankful and glad your child wasn't harmed.
It's an incredible amount of irony that the company who pioneered the hermetically sealed computer, is facing this clusterfuck of a situation. Hopefully they can rectify it immediately. They could even recover by simply saying "We've evaluated our position on removable batteries, and because of safety concerns, we do not feel it is worth the risk to our customers. Instead we will be extending the warranty on AirTagV2, and providi
Americans are Shocked (Score:2)
Australia has strong federal consumer protection laws.
This covers a multitude of legally binding consumer rights from finance products, property rental, car purchases, to the design of children's products like strollers, cots, toys.
The battery laws came about because of multiple children dying painful deaths from ingesting button cells.
In Australia, most products containing button cells have a screw securing the access flap, although I'm sure apple without much effort can design a paperclip hole into the re
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...I'm sure apple without much effort can design a paperclip hole into the release mechanism.
Given the utter void of "paperclip" designs out there, one would think this was somehow patented and restricted for use only in optical drives.
Make it a tamper-proof screw. Not like you're replacing these every other month.
Hmm (Score:2)
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
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Three things to never underestimate the voracity of: Toddlers, pets, and termites.
Wait until they discover AirPods (Score:1, Troll)
AirPods (and similar devices) are even smaller and contain batteries. Just wait until they discover that and block this means of natural selection, too.
Re:Wait until they discover AirPods (Score:4, Insightful)
People don't leave their individual airpods laying around all over the place, unlike these trackers which are designed to be left laying around all over the place.
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Airpods are sealed. I’ve heard they survive a washing machine without issues.
Join the club (Score:1)
Yes, keep those Australian kids away from :
Remote controls ...
Thermometers
Games and toys
Hearing aids
Calculators
Bathroom scales
Key fobs
Watches and electronic jewelry
Flashing shoes & clothing
Cameras
Holiday ornaments
Flameless candles
Musical greeting cards
Give them a boomerang instead, so they can hit their head, unconscious kids don't swallow batteries.
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"A boomerang does not cause death by burning a hole through the wall of your intestines."
Try swallowing a boomerang, you'd be glad about a small hole in your intestines.
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Australian standards (Score:2)
There's the real issue: The battery compartment can be accidentally exposed to children.
Regarding all those snarky comments: Australian standards allow toys (Eg. Kinder surprise) in children's food, US standards to not.
Makes perfect sense (Score:2)
Apple hasn't designed a removable battery in years. It stands to reason that they can't remember how.