Medicines, cleaning products, liquid laundry capsules, and button batteries are the everyday home dangers behind child poisonings. A swallowed button battery is a 999 emergency.
Thousands of young children are seen in UK hospitals each year after swallowing or touching something poisonous at home. The biggest risks are medicines, cleaning products, liquid laundry capsules, e-cigarette refills, and button (coin-cell) batteries. Button batteries are the most urgent: if swallowed, they can burn through a child's throat in as little as two hours.
Young children explore by putting things in their mouths and cannot tell a sweet from a pill or a drink from a cleaning fluid. Brightly coloured liquid laundry capsules and vape refills are especially attractive. Button batteries — found in toys, remote controls, car keys, thin electronics, and greetings cards — react with saliva and generate a caustic current that burns internal tissue, causing catastrophic injury with few early symptoms.
In your child's behaviour
Store hazards up, away, and locked
Keep medicines, cleaning products, liquid laundry capsules, and vape refills up high, out of reach and out of sight, ideally in a locked or child-resistant cupboard. Child-resistant does not mean child-proof — it only buys time.
Treat button batteries as high-risk
Keep spare button batteries in a sealed container out of reach, and check that toys, remotes, and gadgets have battery compartments secured with a screw. Dispose of used batteries safely — a 'flat' battery can still injure.
Know who to call before you need to
Save NHS 111 and 999 where you can find them fast. For a swallowed button battery, do not wait to see if symptoms appear — act immediately.
In immediate danger: call 999. For non-emergency police matters, call 101.
Concerned about a child but it's not an emergency? NSPCC helpline 0808 800 5000. Childline for young people 0800 1111.
This is practical educational content to support families. For case-specific concerns about a child's safety, contact the NSPCC helpline on 0808 800 5000 or your local safeguarding team.
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Last reviewed: 2026-07-27