Going Cashless May Be Saving Kids’ Lives

There are positives and negatives to an increasingly “cashless society,” but this is an unexpected one:

Fewer children are swallowing and choking on coins.  To be clear, this is a POSITIVE.

The study looked at hospital data from 2000 to 2022, and they found that, since 2012, there’s been a “significant decline” in kids requiring procedures to remove objects from throats, noses, and airways.  Analysts noted that 2012 is when contactless payments really started to gain traction.

The swallowing incidents in the data weren’t JUST coins . . . but coins were extremely common.  One stat says that more than 75% of the “foreign bodies” swallowed by kids under six were coins . . . “because of their thin, round shape, and easy accessibility.”

(The Independent)