Getting rid of 1¢/2¢/5¢ coins would be a help, simply so there are fewer coins floating around - less change given on an average transaction.
My kids love playing with coins and before they turn 4 or so, love sticking them in their mouth. You have to be careful not to leave them around. We got a gumball machine that dispenses M&Ms, so at least now they think of coins as “something I should spend” instead of “something I should chew on”.
Coins aren’t that toxic… most of the time. An even worse threat is button and coin cell batteries. Those should really leave any parent worried. When disposing of them, they need to be wrapped up in something big enough they can’t be swallowed and then taped up so the coin can’t get out. Lately I’ve been disposing of them in a sharps container I have for getting rid of Stanley knife razor blades, another decent choice.
“Decline of cash credited” makes me think of “cash credited” in accounting.
The actual headline is “Decline of cash credited for drop in NHS surgery for children swallowing objects” … which doesn’t provide the context necessary to correct this misunderstanding until after you figure you what “NHS surgery” is.
An obvious manipulation tactic on the path to abolish cash. "Think of the children!"
A better alternative, remove small coins. They serve no purpose nowadays, inflation made them obsolete. They are even more expensive to make then their inherent worth.
The only purpose left for using small coins is for psychological manipulation, by pricing items at 0,99 instead of 1,00. This has been proven a successful tactic for supermarkets and vendors, to the detriment of buyers, who are manipulated into thinking something is "cheaper", because the price is reduced by 1% or less.
A few European countries, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy already use the practice of rounding to 5 with no issues whatsoever, thereby basically removing smaller coins.
We don’t even need the choking hazard of coins to justify getting rid of them.
There is essentially nothing you can buy that is individually less than a quarter in value, and probably still not a whole lot that is less than a dollar.
Maybe some disposable shopping bags? Some screws at the hardware store?
I think the US could eliminate coins and start printing 25 cent or maybe 50 cent bills, or perhaps not even do that at all. Transactions under a dollar could be rounded up or be made electronically (eliminate the minimum flat fee part of card transactions first, though).
Why they have to make guesses at this and not actually know the reason? Based on my experience with ER visits there's a form specifically for things removed from a child's nose: 1. raisin, 2. battery, 3. coin, 4. army man, 5. intelligence-enhancing crayon(s) 6. other
Because, as they say in the paper, the data only say a foreign body was removed - not what sort it was.
However, a different study showed that 75% of incidents in kids under 6 was due to coins.
Given that the change appears to coincide with the UK's move to cashless, it is a reasonable assumption. Although they do note the limits of their conclusion.
I once asked my ER doctor relative what is the most avoidable thing adults come into the ER for, and he said choking on something they're eating alone at home.
Nice thing to remember next time you're gagging on some stringy cheese because you thought it better to scarf than chew your pizza.
Flatly absurd. These are the kinds of connections only a schizophrenic mind could make.
"For example, surgeons performed 484 (31%) fewer procedures to remove something from a child’s nose in 2022 compared with 2012."
So your sample size is so absurdly small that your conclusions could not possibly have any meaning. What a waste of time this article was.
--
EDIT: The population of the UK is 68 million people and this is an entirely retrospective assessment. There's probably a reason they just didn't link to the RCSE page itself as it's speculation is far more reserved:
Is sample size even relevant here? If they’re working with NHS data, presumably they have pretty reliable population data (i.e. not randomly sampled) to work with.
And regardless, even if it was a sample, I don’t see how a sample of thousands would be too small to detect a very large effect like that, unless the variance was extremely high. (But again, I’m not sure that complaining about “sample size” even makes sense in this case.)
More than a thousand hits is a very good sample size. The total population of the UK barely matters in this check for statistical significance.
A very general rule of thumb is that you want 10-100 samples in each category. In this case it's about a thousand children in one category and millions in the other category. That's more than enough to measure a 30% difference.
[+] [-] rage4774|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] trollbridge|11 months ago|reply
My kids love playing with coins and before they turn 4 or so, love sticking them in their mouth. You have to be careful not to leave them around. We got a gumball machine that dispenses M&Ms, so at least now they think of coins as “something I should spend” instead of “something I should chew on”.
Coins aren’t that toxic… most of the time. An even worse threat is button and coin cell batteries. Those should really leave any parent worried. When disposing of them, they need to be wrapped up in something big enough they can’t be swallowed and then taped up so the coin can’t get out. Lately I’ve been disposing of them in a sharps container I have for getting rid of Stanley knife razor blades, another decent choice.
[+] [-] tialaramex|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] hinkley|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] pyuser583|11 months ago|reply
“Decline of cash credited” makes me think of “cash credited” in accounting.
The actual headline is “Decline of cash credited for drop in NHS surgery for children swallowing objects” … which doesn’t provide the context necessary to correct this misunderstanding until after you figure you what “NHS surgery” is.
It’s a really bad sentence.
[+] [-] frontfor|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ivanjermakov|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] jbuhbjlnjbn|11 months ago|reply
A better alternative, remove small coins. They serve no purpose nowadays, inflation made them obsolete. They are even more expensive to make then their inherent worth.
The only purpose left for using small coins is for psychological manipulation, by pricing items at 0,99 instead of 1,00. This has been proven a successful tactic for supermarkets and vendors, to the detriment of buyers, who are manipulated into thinking something is "cheaper", because the price is reduced by 1% or less.
A few European countries, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy already use the practice of rounding to 5 with no issues whatsoever, thereby basically removing smaller coins.
[+] [-] zaphod420|11 months ago|reply
This was the first thing I thought.
[+] [-] hinkley|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] dangus|11 months ago|reply
There is essentially nothing you can buy that is individually less than a quarter in value, and probably still not a whole lot that is less than a dollar.
Maybe some disposable shopping bags? Some screws at the hardware store?
I think the US could eliminate coins and start printing 25 cent or maybe 50 cent bills, or perhaps not even do that at all. Transactions under a dollar could be rounded up or be made electronically (eliminate the minimum flat fee part of card transactions first, though).
[+] [-] skeeter2020|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] edent|11 months ago|reply
However, a different study showed that 75% of incidents in kids under 6 was due to coins.
Given that the change appears to coincide with the UK's move to cashless, it is a reasonable assumption. Although they do note the limits of their conclusion.
https://publishing.rcseng.ac.uk/doi/full/10.1308/rcsann.2024...
[+] [-] hombre_fatal|11 months ago|reply
Nice thing to remember next time you're gagging on some stringy cheese because you thought it better to scarf than chew your pizza.
[+] [-] stuartjohnson12|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] erickhill|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Guthur|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] derefr|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] dgrin91|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] bariswheel|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] oska|11 months ago|reply
https://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
[+] [-] GenshoTikamura|11 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] timewizard|11 months ago|reply
"For example, surgeons performed 484 (31%) fewer procedures to remove something from a child’s nose in 2022 compared with 2012."
So your sample size is so absurdly small that your conclusions could not possibly have any meaning. What a waste of time this article was.
--
EDIT: The population of the UK is 68 million people and this is an entirely retrospective assessment. There's probably a reason they just didn't link to the RCSE page itself as it's speculation is far more reserved:
https://www.rcseng.ac.uk/news-and-events/media-centre/press-...
That reads far less like a paper trying to "nudge" people in a preferred direction.
[+] [-] MajimasEyepatch|11 months ago|reply
And regardless, even if it was a sample, I don’t see how a sample of thousands would be too small to detect a very large effect like that, unless the variance was extremely high. (But again, I’m not sure that complaining about “sample size” even makes sense in this case.)
[+] [-] dehrmann|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] krisoft|11 months ago|reply
What do you mean by sample size? These are total numbers for the whole year. There is no sampling going on.
> The population of the UK is 68 million people
Ok? So what?
> and this is an entirely retrospective assessment.
Again, what does this mean? How else would you notice these trends? Proactively?
> There's probably a reason they just didn't link to the RCSE page itself as it's speculation is far more reserved
I read both, and they seem to say the same. Where do you see the difference?
[+] [-] Dylan16807|11 months ago|reply
A very general rule of thumb is that you want 10-100 samples in each category. In this case it's about a thousand children in one category and millions in the other category. That's more than enough to measure a 30% difference.