Are you having trouble opening your hearing aid batteries? If so, this may be due to Reese’s Law, which went into effect in March of 2024. In 2020, Reese Hamsmith tragically lost her life after swallowing a button battery. Reese’s Law, which mandates child-resistant packaging for all button batteries, including hearing aid batteries, was passed in her honor.
The new packaging requires users to cut it open with scissors, which can be challenging, and perhaps even dangerous, for people with hearing loss who also have limited dexterity, vision loss, or other disabilities. It is also inconvenient. If your battery dies in the middle of a meeting or social event, you might not have a pair of scissors at the ready so you can swap your dead battery out for a new one.
Finding a Middle Ground
While it is critical to keep children safe from ingesting dangerous button batteries, perhaps a middle ground can be found for hearing aid batteries. Without batteries, hearing devices won’t work, leaving millions of hearing aid wearers at risk of social isolation or worse. It is critical that hearing aid users have easy access to the batteries they require to remain engaged with life.
A new petition created by Abram Bailey, CEO of Hearing Tracker, is helping to garner support for a middle ground. In the petition, he includes real stories from his Hearing Aid Forum that illustrate the severity of this issue. I have copied some of them below.
- “I can’t open the new battery dispensers. It isn’t safe because I have to cut them out on the counter and hope to find them all.” — maryL
- “Child Resistant Packaging is almost impossible to open… Even if you get past cutting them open like cutting a pie, the plastic holding the battery is hard to open.” — hearer2024
- “I have arthritis in my right thumb… now, it’s a frustrating pain situation to get the little devils out for my son.” — Sue_O
- “I guess I should forget using my hearing aids, is what I’m feeling.” — Bob_P
- “I don’t carry scissors in my car… it takes FOREVER to get them out of the packaging and I pray I don’t shoot it across the room or cut myself.” — MFox
- “Even with stainless steel kitchen scissors, the battery package is super hard to cut open… I can’t begin to imagine what others are going through who do have arthritis.” — blazingsword
Make Your Voice Heard
There must be a compassionate middle ground that honors Reese’s memory but also allows for the practical needs of hearing aid users. The petition urges Senators Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn to consider amendments or exemptions to Reese’s Law specifically for hearing aid batteries, balancing critical safety needs with accessibility concerns.
Together, we can honor Reese’s legacy through compassionate legislation that protects both our children and our elders.
Readers, will you sign the petition?
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After struggling to open the new packages, slicing my finger on the razor sharp plastic edges, having a battery fly out across the room where I was on my hands and knees searching for it, and dulling what was practically a brand new pair of scissors, I now sit there and take the time to cut them all out at once and refill old accessible packages I still have…which defeats the whole purpose of child safety, doesn’t it?
I contacted Rayovac and was told:
“The independent testing also showed that 99% of seniors were able to open the pack for the first time in under one minute*. On the second attempt, this time halved* so we found that consumers become faster with more familiarity and with instruction.”
I would like to know where and how they chose their target group! Also, it should not take one minute to open a pack, it should take one second. Without having to use scissors.
I suggested a possible packaging work around to them:
Just like they have child-proof pill bottles for prescription medication, why can’t Rayovac (or any battery company) sell a child-proof plastic bottle that stacks up (accessible) packets of hearing aid batteries within? A container that holds maybe four to eight packets of eight. This way adults could access the batteries they need to hear and children would not be able to access the child-locking caps just like with potentially dangerous medications.
As an aside, battery packs that used to hold eight batteries in the old packaging now only hold six in the new plastic packaging. Seems like a lose-lose all the way around.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Please sign and share the petition to help our voices be heard.
done
Thank you!
I keep batteries everywhere, each floor my house, all my coats, my desk at work, my car. I haven’t come across the new packaging yet but MFox brings up a great point, do I also need to keep scissors everywhere? I can go to the TD Garden to see a Bruins game with a package of batteries but I doubt they’ll let me in with scissors. I’ll be interested to see how this plays out.
Good point on the scissors. Please sign and share the petition to help amplify our voices.
I see a lot of information about warning labels, and general information about requiring that packaging be childproof. But I don’t see anything specifying the use of scissors. I was also curious as to why my batteries are not in child proof packages, and realized that it is because zinc-air batteries are apparently exempt. My zinc-air batteries are very inexpensive and last a long time.
Thank you for sharing your experience with this issue.
I recently bought some new hearing aid batteries and was shocked to see it all encased in plastic. I had all I could do to get the package open and had to struggle just to get one battery out. I realize this is to protect children and I understand that but the childproofing has gone too far when the adults can’t get the package open. I am really fed up with the childproofing of packages. Some years back I used an antiseptic and then they childproofed it to the point that I could never get it open when I needed it. I gave up on it and threw it out and the manufacturer lost a customer. Also what about people who have arthritis there is no way they can get those hearing aid batteries out the way they are packaged. One of your readers said Rayovac claims that seniors can open the package in one minute. That’s a bunch of baloney. Enough already they should make packages for homes without children. People should not have to struggle like this to get a package open. And people with children should keep the batteries out of reach of children.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences. It is very frustrating!
Another point to consider…with the old packaging you could put the used battery back in the packaging and close the little plastic flap. This allowed you to temporarily store the used battery in a safe manner until it could be recycle recycled. When trying to open the new hearing aid “ child proof” packages, you effectively destroy the package, leaving no safe storage of the used battery and also allowing the fresh batteries to spill out and roll around your purse or pocket. So much for being deemed “child safe”!
Good point! Thank you for sharing your thoughts.