COLUMBUS, Ohio – One child is rushed to an emergency almost every day as a result of accidental poisonings blamed on squishy laundry detergent packets called pods, according to an analysis from Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
Accidental poisonings have landed more than 700 U.S. children in the hospital in just two years, said Dr. Gary Smith, the study’s senior author and director of the hospital’s Center for Injury Research and Policy.
From 2012 through 2013, poison control centers received reports of 17,230 children younger than six years of age swallowing, inhaling, or otherwise being exposed to chemicals in laundry detergent pods, according to the study published in Monday’s online edition of Pediatrics.
Smith says that amounts to nearly one young child every hour. A total of 769 young children were hospitalized during that period, an average of one per day, he said.
The analysis shows most children weren’t seriously harmed. But some suffered seizures and some fell into a coma. One even died last year.
Smith says parents with young children should use traditional laundry detergent, which is much less toxic than laundry detergent pods, and close pod packages or containers and put them away immediately after use, preferably in a locked cabinet.