Why are single-use detergent pods potentially deadly?
Accidental exposures to laundry and dish detergents are on the rise among young children. Between 2013 and 2014, more than 62,000 children suffered an unintentional exposure to a household detergent.
Today's guest blogger is Anna Weiss, MD MSc, a fellow in the Division of Pediatric Emergency Medicine at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
As a mother of three young children, I am constantly scanning store shelves for products that promise to help tame the day-to-day chaos of our busy household. Between sports schedules, school drop-offs, bespoke meal requests, and seemingly infinite loads of laundry, I admit to having been wooed by quite a few "all-in-one" gems (kiddie shampoo-plus-detangler in one convenient bottle? Sign me up!). There is one such product, however, that I will never allow under my roof: the single-use detergent pod.
First introduced to the US market in 2011, single-use laundry and dish detergent pods offer all-in-one cleaning efficiency in a neat, brightly-colored package; as a new study published online today in Pediatrics shows, however, the price of this efficiency can be deadly.
Accidental Exposure to Detergent Pods is on the Rise
In the study, researchers demonstrated an alarming upward trend in accidental exposures to laundry and dish detergents among young children. Between 2013 and 2014, more than 62,000 children suffered an unintentional exposure to a household detergent. Researchers noted that the vast majority of affected children (86 percent) were under the age of three. While the overall exposure rate to all detergent types rose, the rate of exposure to packet-based detergents rose particularly steeply, mirroring their increasing share of the market for household cleaning products.
Detergent Packets Cause More Injury than Traditional Detergents
Even more worrisome, the study found that detergent packets cause more severe harm than traditional detergents to the children who handle or ingest them. Study authors compared injuries from traditional detergents to those from detergent packets and found that detergent packets were significantly more likely to cause injuries serious enough to require hospitalization. Scarier still, the gravest detergent-related injuries—including coma, respiratory failure, cardiac arrest, and even death—occurred only among those children exposed to detergent packets.
What Makes Detergent Pods So Dangerous?
The threat posed to children by detergent packets lies in their particularly treacherous combination of appealing packaging and caustic content. Pods are bite-sized, brightly colored, and—to the undiscriminating toddler—utterly indistinguishable from candy. Worse, the detergent itself is more concentrated than in traditional formulations and is encased in a water-soluble membrane that dissolves rapidly once in contact with the saliva of a young child. Within seconds, the child may be exposed to enough caustic detergent to cause injury, even if he or she spits out the packet after tasting its contents. Once it comes in contact with the skin, eyes, GI tract, or respiratory tissues of a child, detergent from pods can cause injuries ranging from mild GI upset to severe chemical burns that in some cases have led to fatal respiratory failure.
Not in My House
Fortunately, awareness is growing about the dangers of detergent pods to children. In July 2015, Consumer Reports refused to name detergent pods on its list of "Recommended" products, saying their potential hazard outweighed their cleaning efficacy. Also in the last year, the Consumer Products Safety Commission has been working with pod manufacturers to devise packaging changes that may make detergent packets less readily accessible to curious fingers and mouths.
Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine a packaging change that could reliably prevent the kind of exposure that takes mere seconds to cause potentially lethal harm. Therefore, as a parent and as a pediatric emergency doctor, I will not be allowing detergent pods in my grocery cart any time in the foreseeable future. In my quest to achieve perfect domestic efficiency, laundry and dishes will have to wait.
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