There has been a 17 percent increase in calls to poison control centers across the country in the last couple of years because of children eating laundry or dish-washing soap, according to new research.
Donna Seger, medical director with the Tennessee Poison Center, says they may be convenient for parents, but the popular pods can wreak havoc in a child's system. "They can aspirate them or the pod," Seger says. "When it hits some kind of liquid, it kind of explodes, so they get granules into their lungs."
The latest two-year study says poison control centers got more than 22,000 calls because of children either eating or inhaling laundry pods, or accidentally squirting the contents into their eyes. There are reports of injuries to the lungs, burns to the skin and in the most severe cases children have required intubation or experienced cardiac arrest.
Study co-author Henry Spiller with Nationwide Children's Hospital says researchers looked at both laundry and dish-washing soaps, and by far the most dangerous were the laundry pods because they're very colorful. "You know, bright little two and three year olds running around their house, and these are very pretty, and they put them in their mouths," says Spiller. "And they kind of bite into it thinking it's perhaps candy, and it squirts into the back of their throat, and they get sort of a blast of this."
Manufacturers have added warning labels to containers, and some have child-resistant caps, but Spiller urges them to consider changing the formulation or appearance of the laundry packets as well. He notes many are sold in plastic resealable bags that could resemble food pouches. Seger says it's best to keep the pods out of sight and out of mind, for young children. "They definitely need to be kept out of reach," Seger says. "If they're going to have them in the house, they need to be where the children can't get them, can't climb to get 'em, can't get anywhere close to get them.
It's a preventable injury." Children younger than age three accounted for about three-quarters of the total poisoning cases in the study.
