What started the “Tide Pods Challenge” and is it even real?
Timeline Tide Pods Timeline:
- In February 2012, Procter & Gamble introduced the Tide PODS laundry detergent packs.
- By late 2013, The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) claimed to have received more than 500 reports of incidents involving the pods with children and adults.
- On December 4th, 2013, Straight Dope Forums member Silvorange submitted a post titled “People eating Tide pods” discussing rumors about people eating the detergent packs.
- On December 8th, 2015, The Onion published an opinion article written from the point of view of a child trying to eat the laundry pods.
- On May 10, 2016 YouTuber IMCyr made a video which included eating Tide PODS (NSFW language).
- On March 31th, 2017, CollegeHumor uploaded a Youtube video titled “Don’t Eat The Laundry Pods”, which gained over 2.5 million views by the end of the year.
- June 15, 2017 Consumer Reports issued a story, titled “Liquid Laundry Detergent Pods Pose Lethal Risk for Adults With Dementia” about eight deaths related to the pods, two of the cases were young children and six were adults with dementia.
- The following day, NBC reported the Consumer Reports story with the headline “Laundry Pods Can Be Fatal for Adults With Dementia“
On January 1, 2018, Instagramer greenpantsu posted the Tide Pod Chan anime meme, and later said he wasn’t “sure at this point if he should be proud or terrified of what he drew.”
Of eight deaths related to ingesting liquid laundry packets (i.e. Tide Pods) in the U.S. between 2012 and early 2017 that have been reported to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, two of the cases were actually children, with six of them being adults with dementia.
According to the American Association of Poison Control Centers, there were 40 reports of reported ‘exposures’ to liquid laundry detergent pods by 13- to 19-year-olds, compared to 220 in 2017. They also claimed that 25% of them (54) were intentional.
Last year, U.S. poison control centers received reports of more than 10,500 children younger than 5 who were exposed to the capsules, according to Ann Marie Buerkle, acting chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The number of toddlers and teenagers who needed hospitalization is unclear.
Every day, about 300 children are poisoned in the United States and most of these poisonings occur because of accidental ingestion of medication, and two of them die from what they at. (cdc)
Is The Tide Pod Challenge an epidemic? No.
Is it widespread? No.
Parents with small children should keep the Tide Pods, medicines and any non-food items away from curious and hungry children.
Today there are people on Youtube who do stupid stuff for Internet fame… if it’s not tide pods, it’s road surfing on top of their cars. They should look for a safer way to find the attention they crave.
For news agencies and publications, it has become something to create page views on their websites, or attention-grabbing headlines for newscasts. For most teenagers, at least those who had heard about it before it became a headline, it was simply a joke about something that virtually no one would consider doing.
On January 2nd, cosplayer Azumii posed for a picture.
