A new study is out concerning the small liquid detergent pods that can easily be mistaken for candy.
Consumer Reports is no longer recommending the popular household item. They stated, “Given the continued danger, we have made the decision to not include pods on our list of recommended products, and we strongly urge households where children younger than 6 are ever present to skip them altogether.”
“They’re nice colors, they’re bright, and the children can bite through the pods and get liquid detergent,” said Dr. David Arkin with Wiley & Arkin Pediatrics in Glen Allen.
Poison control call centers in the first half of 2015 have already received over 6,000 complaints.
“There have been a lot of serious ingestion with prolonged vomiting, mental status changes, reading problems…because this detergent is so concentrated,” said Dr. Arkin.
Proctor and Gamble, the leading manufacturer of detergent pods and the parent company of tide and gain say “we take every incident of accidental exposure seriously and believe these accidents are preventable.”
The American Cleaning Institute echoing that, saying companies are taking big steps with “more easily read warning labels” and adding “a bittering agent to the products” that would cause children to spit them out.
Consumer Reports’ position doesn’t apply to pods containing powder, injuries associated with those have been less frequent and less severe.
The Virginia Poison Center says they’ve seen just over 70 calls for cases of exposures in 2015 for Central and Eastern Virginia.
Doctors recommends you hide and lock away all detergent pods so kids can’t get to them.
