Reese’s law, which was signed into law by US President Joe Biden recently, has charged the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) with establishing new safety standards around button cell or coin batteries.
The law is named after Reese Hamsmith, an 18 month-old girl who died in Texas in 2020 after ingesting a button cell battery from a TV remote.
According to the wording of the law, it will “protect children and other consumers against hazards associated with the accidental ingestion of button cell or coin batteries by requiring the CPSC to promulgate a consumer product safety standard to require child-resistant closures on consumer products that use such batteries, and for other purposes.”
The law requires the CPSC to establish a product safety standard within one year of the enactment date.
According to terms of the law, the standard will require that the button cell or coin battery compartments of a consumer product to be secured in a manner that would eliminate or adequately reduce the risk of injury from battery ingestion by children that are six years of age or younger.
The law also states that such batteries, if sold separately or included separately with a product, must comply with US federal child-resistant packaging regulations.
The standard will also require warning label requirements to be included on the packaging of button cell or coin batteries and the packaging of a consumer product containing button cell or coin batteries; or a warning label to be included in any literature, such as a user manual, that accompanies a consumer product containing such batteries.