via ajc:
A bizarre new trend dubbed the “Tide Pod Challenge” is gaining popularity among teens on social media — and doctors say it could land them in the emergency room.
The challenge involves people popping the small laundry detergent pacs and posting videos of themselves chewing and gagging on the oozing product online.
A thread of videos with the title “Tide Pod Challenge” have been shared to YouTube. In some videos, teens are putting the pods in frying pans and cooking them before consuming them.
Tide Pods are meant to be used for laundry as an alternative to powder or liquid detergent.
The silly concept of consuming the product first garnered attention in 2015 when the satirical newspaper The Onion published a column about a child who wanted to eat the red and blue detergent pod, which has a candy-like appearance.
Two years later, College Humor shared a video of a man eating an entire bowl of laundry pods and then being carted off into an ambulance. “I don’t regret it,” he said.
According to the American Association of Poison Control Centers, there were more than 10,500 reported exposures to highly concentrated laundry detergent by children age 5 and younger in 2017.
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