Laundry pods pose danger
Candy- coloured detergents causing serious injuries to children
Liquid laundry pods — candystriped detergent packets that are poisonous if swallowed — are harming more Canadian toddlers, causing injuries from chemical burns to the mouth and esophagus to lifethreatening lung inflammation.
In a recent snapshot survey of Canadian pediatricians, researchers found 54 children were injured by exposure to laundry and dishwasher pods. More than half were under age two. Serious injuries included nausea and vomiting, chemical burns to the skin, decreased heart rate and blood pressure, and loss of consciousness, corneal damage and pneumonitis, a dangerous condition causing inflammation of the lungs.
Some children had to be placed on mechanical ventilators to help them breathe while the detergents were removed from their lungs.
“To require intensive- care management for something that is entirely preventable is a very big deal,” said Dr. Jonathon Maguire, a pediatrician and researcher at Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital.
“This is not a rare event. We’ve likely identified just the tip of the iceberg in Canada,” added Maguire, medical director of the Canadian Paediatric Surveillance Program ( CPSP), which conducted the survey with the Public Health Agency of Canada.
Other jurisdictions say there has been a steady rise in injuries from accidental poisonings since the popular, single- load detergent packets hit store shelves in 2012. In the U. S., there were more than 17,000 cases in a recent two- year period, resulting in several hundred injuries and one death.
“It was important to understand this problem in the Canadian context,” Maguire said.
“We identified numerous cases across the country of children being harmed.”
The brightly coloured, shiny, spongy liquid packets can look like candy or toys to toddlers. They are wrapped in a water- soluble film that quickly dissolves in a child’s moist hands or mouth. Children can swallow or burst the packets open, spreading the detergent over their skin or eyes.
“The trouble is, this is highly concentrated detergent — it’s like eating an entire cupful of laundry detergent,” Maguire said. “You can imagine what that does to a little person. It can cause tremendous irritation of the oral cavity, it can cause lung injury as the frothy bubbles get into the lungs and cause serious damage to the airways.”
Since 2012, Health Canada has receive nine reports of “life- threatening, disabling or severe” injuries involving accidental poisoning from detergent pods, the department said in an email. No deaths have been reported.
The agency would not discuss individual cases, but said the number of serious exposures may be higher since it “receives very few reports from industry or consumers on this issue.”
Canada is working with the U. S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to develop new voluntary safety standards for detergent packets, such as opaque wrapping to prevent children from being able to see the pods and childproof package inserts.