Since eating Tide Pods became the biggest trend to come out of January 2018, hundreds of teenagers have been poisoned.
For those of you who don’t know, the ‘Tide Pod Challenge’ is a godawful trend in which people online dare one another to eat soap, which is designed for washing your clothes, because, the internet.
In the first two weeks of January alone, there were 39 cases of teens biting into the laundry detergent, as opposed to 53 cases throughout the whole of 2017.
Terrifyingly, the week after, there were 86 cases reported for 13 to 19-year-olds.
Now, a video has been made, based on a true story, of a child who ingested three laundry detergent pods in one go.
The boy, called JR in the educational video, told his friends he wanted to experience the ‘greatness of laundry detergent videos’ and become ‘Internet famous’.
The doctor in the video, Dr Bernard explains:
After putting three pods in his mouth, he felt a slight burning sensation waft up into his nose. Huddled over the sink, JR was prepared to spit out the detergent as soon as he started biting.
But as soon as he chewed down on the pods, biting into the vinyl plastic, laundry detergent poured into his mouth. He was suddenly overcome by a severe burning and numbing sensation on his tongue.
JR began coughing and wretching and detergent began to seep down into his throat.
JR then inhaled some of the detergent into his trachea, corroding the tissue.
This resulted in the liquid making its way down into his lungs and with each cough, the poison was lodged deeper into his lungs.
JR vomitted and lost consciousness, grabbing his chest in pain while his lips turned blue.
Dr Bernard said:
Contact with surfaces like the oesophagus induces ‘Liquefactive Necrosis’, meaning as the tissue dies, it turns into a liquid pus, disintegrating the lining of the oesophagus as it rolls deep into the stomach and causing possible tissue perforation.
All of this happening within one second of contact.
He explains the pods JR consumed were acidic and so corroded the lining of the oesophagus, finally inducing a death state due to clotted blood.
With a combination of these reactions, increased heart rate and low blood oxygen levels, JR showed imminent respiratory failure.
Stephen Kaminstki, CEO for the American Association of Poison Control Centers, said:
Since our first alert to this life-threatening activity, the trend of intentionally ingesting single-load laundry packets has increased in its popularity despite repeated warnings.
We cannot stress enough how dangerous this is to the health of individuals – it can lead to seizure, pulmonary edema, respiratory arrest, coma and even death.
JR was able to make a recovery from his injuries but without immediate medical attention, could have lost his life.
It’s a sad state of affairs we need such drastic measures to stop people literally eating a cocktail of chemicals which would kill them, but this is where we are now.
In case you were in any doubt: DO NOT EAT TIDE PODS. THEY ARE POISON.
