By JOSIE CLARKE consumer affairs reporter
Experts are warning parents not to rely on devices designed to stop their toddlers getting into medicine bottles or flicking a lighter.
Their warnings follow two recent Waikato fires started by young children using child-resistant Bic lighters. Last year, a 3-year-old used such a lighter to set fire to a garage causing $3000 damage.
Lighters currently on the market use either a metal band or a spring to make it difficult for young hands to produce a flame. .
Hamilton district fire safety officer Ken McKeagg says the more "ingenious or persistent" child can still reproduce a flame.
"They are tested on 6-year-olds to the level that if they cannot produce a flame within 10 minutes they are deemed child-resistant.
"But that's not to say they wouldn't be able to crack it 12 minutes later."
Child health experts are worried that parents are placing too much trust in child-safety devices.
Last week, an Australian study found that children swallowing paracetamol from child-resistant bottles remains a major cause of poisonings.
Fire Service and health professionals say children are capable of mastering child-resistant devices and the real solution is more vigilance from parents.
Parents should know that children as young as 4 are capable of opening the child-resistant caps commonly found on bottles containing medicines and toxic substances.
Dr Nerida Smith, consultant pharmacist for the National Poisons Centre, said she would be surprised if a 4 or 5-year-old could not open child-resistant caps.
"The caps may delay those children opening the bottle, [but] they are not child-proof."
There was no evidence that child-safety caps used on commercial bottles, rather than containers holding prescribed medicines, had been tested to Australian and New Zealand standards.
"Some of them are actually quite flimsy and after a few uses they don't work as they should."
The most advanced child-safety caps, designed to keep at least 85 per cent of children from opening bottles, were useless nine times out of 10 because adults didn't screw them on properly, she said.
Plunket national child safety adviser Sue Campbell said parents should never assume any item with a child-resistant device was safe, and should keep all medicines, lighters and matches in a locked cupboard out of reach of children.
A study by Starship hospital's Safekids department has found accidental poisoning is the second leading cause of hospitalisation for children up to four years.
Rachel Algar, strategist for Safekids, said New Zealand had an appalling rate of childhood injuries with 295 children are hospitalised each week for unintentional injuries. Consumers' Institute chief executive David Russell said the problem was in making a device difficult for children to understand while keeping it practical for adults, especially elderly people.
"Nothing can ever be completely child-proof. If it was, it would probably be unusable by two-thirds of the adult population."
Tricky toddlers often too smart for safety devices
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