Internet challenges have been heartwarming and inspiring, but one challenge has left a bad taste in parent’s mouths.
An online trend called the “Tide Pod Challenge” has teens filming themselves biting into Tide Laundry Pods and posting their reactions. CBS News sites ingredients in the pods are ethanol, hydrogen peroxide and polymers, helpful for erasing dirt, but fatal if ingested. The laundry tablets were reintroduced to consumers by way of the Proctor & Gamble company in 2012. Between the launch and 2014, concerns were raised about the physicality of the pods since toddlers were accidentally digesting them. Changes were made to the pods and the packaging after ten people died from the pods; two were children and eight were elderly people battling dementia.
Despite the changes, teens are still willingly putting their bodies in harms way. “A lot of people were just saying how stupid I was or how – why would I be willing to do that,” Marc Pagan, 19, said. The teen admitted he did it on a dare. “No one should be putting anything like that in their mouths, you know?”
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bd3PyiGgipU/
Proctor and Gamble released a statement condemning the challenge. “They should not be played with,” the statement reads. “Even if meant as a joke. Safety is no laughing matter.”