COLUMBUS – Rick Spiller can tell you exactly when laundry detergent packets hit the market. Most people who work in poison control probably could.
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“You think you know something, and 2012 came around and these pods came out,” said Spiller, director of the Central Ohio Poison Center at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. “They were a shock.”
To children, those shiny lumps might as well be candy. Kids did what kids do. They put them in their mouths.
From January 2013 to December 2014, poison control centers nationwide took more than 22,000 calls concerning kids and laundry pods. About 450 cases occurred in central Ohio. In most, the pods had been ingested.
Spiller is co-author of a study out today in the journal Pediatrics that looked at more than 62,000 cases involving children younger than 6 and laundry and dishwasher detergent during 2013 and 2014. The research, which built on an earlier paper by some of the same authors, showed that over those two years, detergent package cases increased faster than cases involving regular detergents, increasing 17 percent
Poison control centers received more than 30 calls a day about children who had been exposed to a laundry detergent packet, which is about one call every 45 minutes, Spiller wrote.
The study also found that laundry pods were far more dangerous for kids. Serious issues, including coma, trouble breathing, heart problems, and even death, were only seen in children exposed to the chemicals in the packets, Spiller said.