A mother in Petawawa, Ont. whose son ended up in hospital with chemical burns to his eyes and mouth is warning others that the childproof packaging on laundry pods may not be enough to keep kids safe.
Mel Harrison says that on Sunday night, her seven-year-old son Makai got into her pack of Tide pods that she leaves on the dryer in her basement. Though the pods come in a bag with a “child-guard” zipper that Harrison admits even she has trouble opening, Makai managed to open the bag, pull out a pod, and bring it up to his room.
The boy later told his mother he thought that, because the pods were “soft and squishy,” they must be some kind of toy.
“He wanted to see what the stuff in the middle was. He couldn’t break it open with his hands, so he tried to bite it open. And it blew up in his face,” Harrison told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview.
The concentrated dose of detergent sprayed into her son’s eyes, causing him to scream ”in blood-curdling terror,” she explains in a Facebook post describing the incident.
Harrison, says she and her husband rushed Makai to the hospital. They were relieved to find he hadn’t swallowed much of the detergent, but the greater concern was his eyes.
They were badly burned and doctors needed to flush them out with saline, which Harrison says required holding him down and giving him an anesthetic in his eyes.
“I had to leave because I couldn’t watch my son go through that,” said Harrison, who is five months pregnant, explaining her husband stayed in the exam room instead.
The flushing took 20 minutes and Makai screamed through the whole thing. “I went out to the parking lot and I could still hear him from there,” she said, growing emotional.
Makai has since seen an eye specialist who says some of the burns are on his corneas, which could permanently affect his vision.
“There is a very good chance they’re not going to heal,” she said.
In a statement to CTV News, Tide said that “nothing is more important to us than the safety of the families who use our products.”
“Over the past several years, we have taken comprehensive and meaningful steps to reduce accidental exposure to laundry pacs, including safety education campaigns for parents and caregivers, warnings on product labels and changes to the product to lessen the likelihood of ingestion,” the company said.
“Even with these measures, which include child-resistant packaging, it is important for parents to keep laundry pacs and all household cleaning products stored properly where they cannot be reached by children.”
Makai is still in shock and can’t believe what happened to him.
“He won’t go into the basement right now. He wants nothing to do with the laundry area,” she said. “…So it really did a good number on him.”
Harrison admits she never thought to warn her son to stay away from the pods.
“I guess I didn’t want to give him any ideas where he’d be like, ‘Oh, Mom’s making a big fuss over these things…’,” she said.
“We don’t let him use the internet, so he doesn’t know about the ‘Tide pod challenge’,” she added, referring to a string of videos in which teens tried to eat laundry pods, often incurring caustic burns as a result.
Makai has now asked his mother not to buy the pods again. “And I’m not going to; I’m going to get rid of the ones I have,” Harrison said.
After posting her story on Facebook and re-posting it to several parenting groups, Harrison says other parents are telling her they’ve since thrown out their pods and are planning to switch to plant-based cleaners.
“I’m going to do that too, because I don’t ever want to have to go through this again,” she said. “And I don’t think my son does either.”
