Poison control centers around the country have gotten thousands of calls concerning children accidentally eating bright colored laundry detergent pods. The danger is life threatening. Here's what you need to know as a parent.

 

As a parent, these type of dangers drive me crazy. They seem so innocent, but the dangers are so prevalent.

These color detergent pods in question can easily be mistaken for candy.

According to CNN , last year a Florida mother of a 7-month-old came back to her room to find that her baby had accidentally eaten one of those bright colored laundry detergent pods.

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He had been sleeping in a laundry basket with the pod when it happened. They rushed him to the hospital, but it was too late. He died, of poisoning from the detergent, according to the Kissimmee, Florida, police department.

He is not the first child to mistake the potent packet for something else.

In the period of about a year, 17,230 children under the age of 6 have been accidentally poisoned by the packets, according to a new study in the journal Pediatrics. That's about one child every hour between March 2012 and April 2013. Of those cases, 4.4% of the children were hospitalized, and 7.5% experienced a "moderate or major medical outcome."

Children who eat the detergent can immediately go into respiratory distress and vomit violently. If their eye accidentally comes into contact with the pods, exposure can cause severe irritation or even a temporary loss of vision.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has seen a decline over the years in accidental poisonings due to kids eating household products overall, but the number of accidents related to these pods has increased significantly.

A few minutes making sure all dangerous items in the household are out of reach from the little ones could be the difference between life and death.

 

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