(COLUMBUS, Ohio) – Consumer Reports announced it will no longer recommend liquid laundry detergent pods because of the risk of accidental poisonings of young children. Instead, it is recommending households with kids under six use regular detergent. Doctors from Nationwide Children’s Hospital were the first to publish a national study and call for consumer changes like this.
The study detailed the dangers of laundry detergent pods, researchers called for a national product safety standard in an effort to better protect children. “Our study showed that during a two year period, there were more than 17,000 children exposed to the highly concentrated chemicals in laundry detergent pods. That’s a child every hour,” said Gary Smith, MD DrPH, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
Smith, the study’s senior author, says children often mistake the the small, brightly-colored laundry pods for candy and bite into them. “Once they do that, they can get into trouble very quickly,” added Marcel Casavant, MD, who collaborated on the study. “The chemicals in these pods are so concentrated that a child can be exposed to a dangerous amount in an instant,” he said.
“The bottom line is, we need a new, voluntary safety standard for these products before any more children get hurt,” added Dr. Smith.
