Stop making that laundry detergent look so darn delicious!
A new bill introduced in Albany this week would ban the production and sale of candy-esque Tide Pods and any other tasty-looking liquid detergent packets in New York — because toddlers who don’t know any better keep eating the toxic products and teenagers who do are chowing down on them for thrills.
The legislation, sponsored by Big Apple Democrats State Sen. Brad Hoylman and Assemblywoman Aravella Simotas, would require companies to ensure their detergent is a “uniform color that is not attractive to children” and is packaged in an opaque wrapper that is “not easily permeated by a child’s bite.”
The American Association of Poison Control Centers says more than 10,000 cases of young kids being exposed to single-load detergent packets were reported last year — and another 606 have already come in this year.
Meanwhile, teenagers keep recording themselves eating the colorful Tide Pods — which feature appetizing blue, white and green swirls in see-through packets — for a viral internet meme called the “Tide Pod Challenge.”
Poison control centers handled 86 cases of millennials deliberately exposing themselves to the laundry liquid in the first three weeks of 2018 alone, the AAPCC reports.
Hoylman and Simotas also on Tuesday sent a letter to Tide parent company Procter & Gamble, demanding it make the product look, taste and smell less appetizing.
“You and other manufacturers must use a stronger bittering agent to prevent ingestion of pods, reduce their pleasant smell, and make them feel more firm,” the lawmakers wrote.