2017–2018 · USA
Teenagers are eating detergent for likes!
The Tide Pod challenge
Panic meter
The verdict
An online challenge to bite detergent capsules got enormous attention. The cases were real but few – small children were most at risk.
Reality meter
What was said?
Around the turn of 2017–2018, jokes and videos about eating brightly coloured laundry detergent pods began to spread. The media reported on a dangerous trend among teenagers, and YouTube and Facebook started removing the videos.
The verdict: what happened next?
Poison control centres in the US saw a rise in intentional poisonings among teenagers in early 2018, but the numbers were small. The most serious cases still involved young children who put the pods in their mouths by accident – a risk that had existed ever since the pods came on the market.
Manufacturers made the packaging harder to open and gave the pods a bitter taste.
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