To be terrified of addicts contaminating baby changing tables?

[SpikyCactus]

Apparently drug addicts are using baby changing tables to shoot up drugs. So changing your baby could expose them to fatal traces of drugs or infected blood.

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-6208231/Indiana-mother-reveals-shocking-truth-black-marks-left-babys-changing-table.html

AIBU to be utterly terrified?

Drugs are the least of your worries, if you are putting a baby onto one of those filthy changing shelves without a mat of some kind.

I got a big roll of catering paper towel and carried a few lengths so I could chuck it after changing DS. I wouldn't put a mat back in my bag after touching those shelves.

You do sound very anxious.

I won't even today use metal spoons available to the public after DH inadvertently ended up high as a kite after making a coffee in hospital.

Spoons were checked and locked in the staff room till further notice. I worry (but I also have anxiety) about fentanyl like a previous poster, common in my area and so, so strong. A patient during that hospital stay of DH's died after sneaking out the hospital to take it coming back and been given methadone by the clueless staff.

Use your lap. I would be more worried about D&V tbh.

I changed my son's on my lap 🤷‍♀️

I saw this and my first thought was, where are all the reports of babies hospitalised from drug exposure.

There arn't any. So even if addicts are using the changing tables, it's not affecting the babies.

Plus would you really cut up drugs where there may have been baby poo. Don't most people use the top of the tank bit or the lid of the seat.

Yes addicts use baby changing toilets to snort and shoot up. Just make sure you wipe down and maybe put a nappy down first before changing your baby, and no harm done.

The needles in fruit thing is happening in Oz at the minute, lots have been found in strawberries ( also bananas and mangos) , possibly people copying the original culprit. Where I live people are going all out to buy extra strawberries to support the farmers. You just make sure to cut them up first.

I have always used my own changing mat to put on the top of them. For the people saying take news, I watched Jeremy Kyle do this on the Kyle files once (only time I ever watched it) and he was going around shopping centre changing rooms and testing the changing tables for cocaine. Nearly all of them came up positive for it. Mothers were shocked.

People do use them for drugs as they are somewhere inconspicuous that not many would think about.

But yeah I had a good away mat that I use to put on top of them

I think it only happens in rough public toilets, most of these have been shut down here, I don’t think it’s likely to happen in supermarket toilets or in shopping centres. I wouldn’t change a baby in dirty public loos anyway, would rather change them in my car or find a clean area.

Are you in Indiana, OP?

I don’t think it’s likely to happen in supermarket toilets or in shopping centres.

I’ve just remembered one shopping centre baby change I used a year or two ago. The baby change was locked with a radar key so I had to find a cleaner to open it for me.

It was purely a baby change, not doubled with a disabled toilet or anything, it just had a changing table, sink and bin, so I was puzzled about it being locked. It also was lit by blue uv lights rather than normal lights.

I was talking to someone about it later - apparently that particular town has a drug problem and loads of the public toilets there have been fitted with the blue lights to make it harder for junkies to inject drugs. Which also probably explains why the baby change was fitted with a radar key lock.

This reminds me of "outside pavement disease" & I will ever fondly remember the poster who coined that phrase. OK I know it's not the same but made me smile. I have relatives who live a very "naice" place and in one very smart restaurant all shelves in the loos are on a slope to stop handy drug usage. I really don't think ingestible drugs can be transmitted to a baby via osmosis give reasonable precautions.