laundry Liquitabs safety warning - please read if you don't know the dangers to toddlers

[EdithWeston]

article here.

Linked in case there are other peole who are unaware of their dangers: there has been a spate of admissions to hospital for toddlers with various very serious injuries. The contents of the tab are alkali and strong enough to cause burns/swelling to eyes if spattered and thread (leading to need to ventilate).

These injuries typically follow small children getting hold of the tabs and playing with them leading to their splitting.

The packaging, according to the article, does not have safety warnings. But they need to be kept out of the reach of children at all times.

I had no idea about this
My two are much older now but I shall be telling all my friends with smaller children..

To be honest, I'm not sure I would have been sure it was an A&E situation before it happened,but I knew by the nature of the screams that this was not just a soap in the eye job. You know, the scream that only a parent would recognise as being different from common-or-garden "I've hurt myself" wails. I've only heard it from that child the once.

Everyone should keep their cleaning products (which includes laundry detergent) away from small children, shut away in a cupboard they cannot open. I thought everyone knew this...

everyone DOES know it, Bonsoir, but sometimes life doesn't work that way and it would really help for manufacturers not to package their products in such a way as they don't become kiddie-attracting, cartoon-covered, sweetie-resembling chemical bombs...

like i say, it happened to me and i only just picked the thing up. if the skin of the tab is already weakened with moisture a child could burst it just by touching it.

My son was 'helping' me with the laundry (starting him young) and he took the tab out of the machine and put it in his mouth, where of course it melted. He waw able to spit it out and have lots of water - no harm done, but he didn't get it in his eyes etc. He still talks about it two years later!

exactly, iggi. we're supposed to get our kids to help with the chores from a young age. and it's not at all unreasonable for a parent to assume that a sealed package would be safer than, say, an open cup of powder.

..and I must admit I do like giving the tabs a wee squeeze, they are very pleasant to touch.

I use liquitabs and tablets in the dishwasher, and had thought that they would be very dangerous if ingested (especially the tabs as they don't come in a wrapper, but rather dissolve on contact with moisture/water), yet I still kept them in a low cupboard in the kitchen (right at the back in my (poor) defense). And DD2 loves to help me with the dishwasher, though I don't let her (or my older children for that matter) but the tabs in. DD2, who is 22 months, came over to me yesterday with a couple of the tablets (in the individual wrapper). I immediately grabbed them off her as those packs do rip open easily. My tabs are now safely up on high. These stories have horrified me and I'm just glad that my daughter hasn't paid the price for my stupidity. I had guessed correctly how dangerous they could be to be ingested, but I had never thought about the liquitabs bursting like that.
Thanks for the warning and the reminder OP.

I found this useful. I don't have any children yet but could have family coming round with young kids and though I would have thought to make sure bleach, spray cleaners etc were out of reach, I probably would have left my dishwasher tablets on top of the dishwasher absent-mindedly as they don't scream "danger" to me.

Obviously I would never have let them touch/play with them but I have found this info useful. Thanks OP!

Plus they would be pretty bad if they got in an adults eyes too! pretty stupid adult but not impossible.

I saw a survey on some of the blogs today by Lindam that was talking about how mums are too busy cooking etc to have eyes in the back of their heads. Very true!

Really quite simple to lock these sort of things away out of reach though or buy a child proof cupboard lock

but its not just about keeping them out of reach is it. many of us (me included) have said we quite willingly give our toddlers tablets so they can help us.

I wouldnt dream of keeping cleaners etc within reach of my dd's but when I am cleaning I have handed her the detol bottle so she can pretend to spray or put the washing powder in the drawer.

I do these things with out even thinking, I'm supervising so what could possibly go wrong its articles like these that make me re think. So I for one am glad you bought it to our attention.

Thankyou

i dont use these either. i woukd and do keep things out of reach but i also let my little ones 'help' and my elder two can do a load of laundry etc. it woukdnt have occured to me that they may burst or that if they did the consequences coukd be so dangerous! i would have been thinking wasing up liquid/powder and wash it off etc. so thsnks for the heads up :)

thanks OP, I'm grateful. It's not that I keep liquitabs scattered on the floor when ds has friends with small siblings over, it's just that it's a long time since I had a toddler around full-time and you forget what it's like... also like others on this thread, I thought of them as a 'keep them away' rather than a 'lock them away' level of risk.

Plenty of simple safety procedures get sneered at... and they make a difference. Pre-surgery checklists, for example, such as checking who the patient is and whether they have the right sort of blood available - now halving former mortality rates at hospitals near you. Stuff may be common sense but that doesn't mean it is automatic.

I am on Weightwatchers, how many points is a liquitab?

I have always locked away cleaning products etc but I had something happen similar it Iggi

Something my baby once did was open up the laundry machine and get out the liquid tablet - it was all gone by the time I got there ( three steps away) and at first I never knew if he ate it all up or just spilled it everywhere and it was awful - but after checking it all through he was fine.

It was frightening though.

As I didn't think anything of it when he got the door open at first as I usually used a different type of tablet.

My laundry machine is on the floor and has a clear door - the door locks when you push the start button but I must not have pushed the start button correctly.

All was ok but it gave me a real fright though and I'm sure my little one was attracted to it because it probably looked like a sweet.

I buy the laundry liquid or gel that comes in bottles. On those it just says to rinse with water if it gets in the eyes.

If I am reading this right then the op is saying there should be a warning on the packaging.

I would thought if you were too wee to know they shouldnt be eaten you are too wee to read the warning ... and those who can read a warning are old enough to keep them away from toddlers So it aint gonna help

I think the co are being villafied for no reason... they make it quite clear to the people buying them what they are for . its then up to those who have bought them to keep them out their toddlers grasp

honestly there are much worse things in this world people could be up in arms about

frasers, I think the things that make them especially dangerous and that most people don't realise are that they burst very easily and explode with a lot of force. Most cleaning products do not do this. Also, they are very attractive to toddlers as they are pretty colours and squidgy.

As you can see from this thread, plenty of reasonably sensible people allow their toddlers to put them in the washing, never realising that they are so dangerous.

I don't like to be harsh, but surely common sense is the issue here tbh.
Why would anyone leave detergents of any kind in the reach of children, even more so with liquid tabs as they look very attractive to littleones?
One of the los involved was a baby, how on earth did the baby manage to get into the kitchen in the 1st place let alone grab & eat a liquid tab-what happened to babygates, playpens & common sense?

The fault here is the parents, they made a mistake and want to blame anyone else but themselves. Its kinda the same as the baby bath seats where a few parents went to answer door/phones etc and then blame the company when their babies drowned, awful preventable tragedy.
Now they have a big warning poster with them in the box- surely common sense would tell you not to leave a baby or a child alone in a bath, the same as not leaving small child/baby alone in a kitchen near detergents etc that are within clear view and reach !!
COMMON SENSE

the liquitabs are designed to burst open within the first few moments of a wash which is gentle movement of water...so clearly they are not designed to be treated with any kinda force.

if you are getting your toddler to help with the washing tell them to hold it gently and dont let them put it near their face

its common sense

One of these liquitabs burst in my, usually very sensible, MIL's face as two had got stuck together in the box and she thought they would gently pull apart. Luckily she wears glasses so eyes were ok but some did go in her mouth. Even adults are conned into how attractive and innocuous these products look.

I think it's worth reiterating quite often that even washing powders etc need to be locked away like bleach is. Everyone gets caught out at some point with the chaos of small children running around - I like reminders as they make me double check.

Dishwasher tablets are also bloody lethal. Maybe we should put pressure on manufacturers to put them in child proof boxes at least.

Careful with that smugness, frasers, it'll come back to bite you on the bum one day. We all make mistakes sometimes - unless you think you are uniquely perfect.

I read an interesting article a while back about why people often react in this 'the parents were stupid' way. It is a psychological defence mechanism to hearing such an awful story. You seek to reassure yourself by automatically and instinctively marking the person this happened to as 'other' and therefore why something so dreadful would never happen to you. If you can mark the parents as stupid then, knowing you are not stupid, you know you will never face such a tragedy.

However, as outlined in many posts above, it has happened to many normal, careful parents. And to adults too (who I bet weren't squeezing the tabs).