By Serena Ng
This past spring, Edward Bottei punctured dozens of laundry
detergent packets using a chisel-shaped instrument to see what it
took to burst them.
The medical director of Iowa's Poison Control Center was seeking
explanations for a mystery that has stumped toxicologists: Why some
children who bite into laundry detergent packets get hurt so badly,
including in some cases needing to be intubated to help them
breathe.
That question is one of many that poison-control experts have
about so-called single-dose laundry detergent.
Children have been sampling regular detergent for years without
much harm. But young children who accidentally burst packets of
concentrated detergent have been hospitalized at a rate of about
one a day in the U.S. since the products were rolled out widely in
2012. While at least seven people have died after ingesting their
contents, thousands of children experienced only minor
symptoms.
The wide range of medical outcomes has made it challenging for
doctors and poison-control experts to pinpoint what about the
laundry packets makes them much more potentially hazardous than
conventional liquid or powdered detergent.
While the contents of the packets are highly concentrated, and
the detergent can shoot out with force when the packets are burst,
it isn't clear what substances in them can cause life-threatening
injuries. Especially puzzling is why some children have become
drowsy after swallowing the chemicals.
"We don't know why some children get so sick from laundry pods,"
said Brandon Wills, a toxicologist and associate medical director
at the Virginia Poison Center.
European regulators have stepped up rules for the product,
requiring the addition of deterrents like bittering agents and
tougher packets that are harder to burst. In the U.S., several
detergent makers including Procter & Gamble Co., Cot'n Wash
Inc. and Sun Products Corp. said Tuesday they plan to coat their
laundry packets in a foul-tasting substance to deter children from
biting into them.
American manufacturers are facing pressure to implement further
safety measures after taking earlier steps that included making
their containers opaque and harder to open, and enlarging warning
labels. They have been working with consumer-safety advocates on a
set of voluntary standards that are similar to the European
measures, and a vote is expected this month.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission provided input into
the standards and will closely monitor their effectiveness,
Chairman Elliot Kaye said. The CPSC has authority to enact
mandatory standards if industry can't come up with effective
voluntary measures.
Knowing why this particular detergent delivery system can be so
harmful, meanwhile, would help emergency-medicine experts better
treat injured children, doctors say. But there isn't a lot of
information to go by. Consumer-product manufacturers have closely
guarded the details of how they formulated and what kind of safety
testing they did with laundry packets that encapsulate detergent
inside a film that melts or disintegrates when submerged in
water.
Unlike packaged-food products and cosmetics, which are required
by the Food and Drug Administration to list their individual
ingredients on their labels, most household cleaning products
aren't required to provide the same level of detail. Containers of
P&G's Tide Pods, for example, simply state the product
"contains nonionic and ionic surfactants, ethoxylated polyethylene
polyamine (polymer) and enzymes" and advise giving a glass of water
or milk and calling a poison center if the product is accidentally
swallowed.
A P&G spokesman said laundry detergent packets "are safe
when stored away from children in their original packaging and used
as intended," and their contents can be twice as concentrated as
other forms of liquid detergent. The company's website, meanwhile,
has product safety sheets that list the ingredients in Tide Pods
and their respective functions.
Still, how the chemicals act separately or in unison when
ingested can be difficult to pinpoint, medical experts said. "We
just don't have enough information or experiential science to know
what effects they have on the human body," said Rais Vohra, an
associate professor of clinical emergency medicine at the
University of California, San Francisco. It isn't known, for
example, what chemicals are responsible for the central nervous
system depression evident in some children. "You don't see that
with ordinary soaps," Mr. Vohra said.
In Sioux City, Iowa, Mr. Bottei decided to study the physical
properties of laundry packets to see if they played a role in the
severity of the accidents involving children.
He found that packets containing thicker detergent required more
force to burst. The brands of laundry packets with thinner liquids
could make the detergent more likely to get into a child's airways,
Mr. Bottei said. He has documented his preliminary findings in a
research paper that is under review.
The California Poison Control System in Madera, Calif., has
found a disproportionately high number of severe poisoning
incidents occurred when children ingested All Mighty Pacs, made by
Sun Products. The All laundry packets contained thinner liquids
than some other brands.
A Sun Products spokeswoman said the company wasn't aware of the
issue.
Write to Serena Ng at serena.ng@wsj.com
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