“Children at this age will explore their environment by putting things in their mouth and if they simply bite down on one of these things, they’ll burst and those contents will shoot to the back of their throat”, Smith said.
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Safety experts encourage parents to use more conventional methods until their kids are a little older.
“They need to take caution with, put it behind a cabinet, put it behind you know a cabinet that locks”, said Dr. Henry Spiller with Nationwide Children’s.
Young kids often see detergent pods as bright and colorful toys, in sizes that fit perfectly in their small hands.
People who have young children that live in or visit their home should use traditional laundry detergent, which is much less toxic than laundry detergent packets.
The researchers found that liquid laundry detergent packets – as opposed to granules – were the most harmful when ingested by children.
“Differences in chemical composition and concentration between laundry detergent packets and other types of detergents may account for the higher toxicity observed”, they wrote.
A recent standard to make these products safer was adopted by detergent packet manufacturers, but the voluntary standard isn’t strong enough because the number of poisoning cases keep increasing, Smith said. Researchers say that’s an increase of 17 percent in that two-year span. There were two deaths reported during that period as well. “It isn’t worth the risk when there is a safer and effective alternative available”, pointed out study co-author Marcel Casavant, chief of toxicology at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio, US.
Data for this study were obtained from the National Poison Data System, which is maintained by the American Association of Poison Control Centers (AAPCC). The study showed that incidents related to laundry pods, as opposed to its traditional counterparts, were implicated in the majority of calls made to poison control.
The Central Ohio Poison Center provides state-of-the-art poison prevention, assessment and treatment to residents in 64 of Ohio’s 88 counties.
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