A female student at Utah State University was hospitalized over the weekend after ingesting a Tide Pod.
In a situation that campus police called a “Tide Pod overdose,” a female student from Utah State University was rushed to the hospital after ingesting a Tide laundry detergent pod. The Tide Pod product has been at the center of a popular Internet meme for the last several weeks, which involved users satirically joking about eating the popular detergent product.
Some, however, have taken the joke to the next level. Breitbart Tech reported this week that YouTube is removing videos of users taking the “Tide Pod challenge,” which involves (you guessed it) individuals consuming Tide Pods in front of their cameras.
“YouTube’s Community Guidelines prohibit content that’s intended to encourage dangerous activities that have an inherent risk of physical harm,” YouTube said in a statement. “We work to quickly remove flagged videos that violate our policies.”
“The ‘laundry packet challenge’ is neither funny nor without serious health implications,” AAPCC’s CEO and Executive Director Stephen Kaminski said last week. “The intentional misuse of these products poses a real threat to the health of individuals. We have seen a large spike in single-load laundry packet exposures among teenagers since these videos have been uploaded.”
In the first 15 days of 2018, the American Association of Poison Control centers has fielded 39 cases of intentional Tide Pod consumption.
Proctor & Gamble, the company behind the detergent pods, released a statement through their spokesperson regarding the recent incidents. “Each year laundry pacs have been on the market, we’ve taken meaningful steps to reduce accidental exposure,” the spokesperson said. “We have co-led the development of industry standard since its initiation and taken actions including adding child-resistant closures to the bags and tubs and adding bittering substances to the packets to deter accidental ingestion. We’ve also worked with organizations like Safe Kids Worldwide to educate parents and caregivers on safe use and storage.”
The condition of the Utah State student has not been made available.