The internet is full of hilarious and ridiculous trends. But its latest, the Tide Pod Challenge, could cost you your life.
The challenge has eager social media users posting videos of themselves eating the colorful bright orange, white and blue laundry detergent packets. Now as many people learn as children, laundry detergent isn’t something humans should be eating. But if you or somebody you know dares to actually try it, the effects are pretty nasty.
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Buzzfeed interviewed Jana L. Anderson, pediatric emergency medicine physician from the Mayo Clinic, to break down everything that will happen.
Once you take an initial bite, you are likely immediately gag or vomit.
“The pods are in plastic wrapping, which puts them under some pressure, so when you chew on them they will explode in the mouth and coat the mucous membranes inside,” Anderson said.
Along with a nasty taste, the chemicals in the pod will cause a burning sensation in the mouth due the high alkaline pH levels in the detergent. Once swallowed, the detergent will continue to burn the inside of your body, starting in the esophagus and lining of your stomach.
“The chemicals can cause burns on the back of mouth and down the esophagus,” Anderson said. “That’s why the body typically immediately revolts and people vomit, because the stomach is burning.”
As the detergent continues to pass through the body it will cause diarrhea and severe stomach pain.
“The one good thing is that it won’t take that long for it to pass through your body, so you’ll know within the first hour after ingesting it if something is going to happen,” Anderson said.
But Anderson claims there’s an even bigger danger eating the pod presents. People will have the natural tendency to gasp for air as the burning sensation in their throat kicks in. This can cause the detergent or the ensuing vomit to enter the trachea and lungs.
“People can also cough and aspirate on their own vomit, which contains the detergent, so it can go into the lungs,” Anderson said. A person would likely have to be rushed to the hospital and put on a ventilator if that happens.
So how much eaten detergent would it take to kill a person? According to Anderson it would take quite a few pods.
“Technically, yes, you can die if you inhaled or ingest a very large amount of laundry detergent and a small child could die from a single pod if they got enough of it in their lungs,” Anderson said. “It causes an inflammatory cascade — so you get the irritation in the lungs, go into acute respiratory distress, and that leads to swelling and fluid pooling into the lungs which can be fatal.”
