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The latest viral “challenge” on social media is one of the most potentially harmful of the bunch: Teenagers are biting into laundry detergent pods.
The Tide Pod Challenge is the outgrowth of jokes online about how the colorful squishy pods look like candy. The packaging includes prominent warnings about keeping them away from children.
It’s older kids, though, who have been posting the videos — to the concern of the manufacturers and public-health agencies.
Though most of the challenge participants spit out the pods immediately after biting, swallowing even a small amount of the highly concentrated detergent found in pods can cause vomiting and diarrhea, USA Today reported. If the detergent is aspirated into the lungs, it could cause breathing difficulties.
According to the American Association of Poison Control Centers, poison control centers received reports of more than 10,500 exposures to highly concentrated paced of laundry detergent by children 5 and younger in 2017.
Tide’s parent company, Procter and Gamble, reiterated that laundry pods are meant only to clean clothes.
“Our laundry pacs are a highly concentrated detergent meant to clean clothes, and they’re used safely in millions of households every day,” the statement read. “They should be only used to clean clothes and kept up, closed and away from children.
“They should not be played with, whatever the circumstance is, even if it is meant as a joke.”
The first big viral challenge was 2012’s cinnamon challenge, in which participants ate a spoonful of cinnamon. The even bigger ice bucket challenge, in the summer of 2014, was photogenic but not as hazardous, and it was for a good cause (ALS research).
A series of “fire challenges” has encouraged participants to douse various body parts in flammable liquids and set them aflame.
