Detergent Pods Continue to Prompt Calls to Poison Centers

Nov. 29--The danger of colorful "detergent pods," which can look like candy to children, hit home locally last year when a 7-month-old Osceola boy died after eating one of the pods.

Since then the issue has received a lot of attention, but the number of calls to local poison centers hasn't dropped.

There were 410 cases of laundry-pod exposure in the state between Jan. 1 and Nov. 19, 2013. During the same period this year, there were 436, according to Florida Poison Information Center in Tampa.

So far this year, there have been 65 calls to the Tampa division, which records data for Orange, Osceola, Brevard, Marion, Volusia and Seminole counties. Of those, 58 cases were in children younger than 5 years old, 36 went to the hospital, and four were treated in the critical-care unit.

In addition to coughing and vomiting, there have been reports of diarrhea, lethargy, drowsiness and eye irritation. In severe cases, children have seizures, go into a coma and have to be intubated so they can breathe. There have been two reported deaths, including the local one.

Some children become rapidly symptomatic, so "poison-control specialists are a lot more cautious about how they handle these calls," said Alfred Aleguas, managing director of the Tampa poison center.

"We oftentimes ask them to go to the emergency department for evaluation," said Adam Wood, a clinical toxicologist at Nemours Children's Hospital in Orlando. "We ask the parents not to induce vomiting, because it can cause tissue damage."

Dr. Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, published a study showing more than 17,000 children younger than 6 were exposed to pods from 2012 to 2013 in the U.S. Children younger than 3 made up nearly two-thirds of the cases.

In more than half of the cases, children were cared for at home. But about one-third had to be treated in the ER, and some were admitted to the intensive-care unit.

"It's a broad spectrum, but it's the upper end of the spectrum that we haven't seen in the past," Smith said.

Detergent makers have said that they're making changes to the packaging to make them safer, but Smith said he doesn't think they've done enough.

"I just a purchased a package a couple of weeks ago that had a zip top. That's not childproof. The key message is that we need to do more. We need a national safety standard for laundry-detergent pods."

The issue also points to a bigger problem.

"We live in a world that products are designed by adults for the convenience of adults, and child safety is only an afterthought. These pods are wonderful for adults, but we should have known that they could pose a danger to children. We need to do much better in providing a safe environment for children," Smith said.

nmiller@tribune.com or 407-420-5158

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