Study: Laundry Detergent Pods Sending Kids to Hospital Less Frequently

Laundry detergent pods sent hundreds of children to the hospital after more than 17,000 kids in the U.S. came into contact with them in 2012 and 2013, according to a new study.

At least one of those cases, all children age six and under, resulted in death, Bloomberg reports; 4.4 percent of the cases resulted in hospitalization. The data came from the National Poison Data System, which revealed that the number of exposures to laundry pods increased more than sevenfold between March 2012 and April 2013.

The good news is that the number of children ingesting the products appears to be on the decline. There was a 25 percent decline in the number of cases of that between April and December of last year.

Detergent manufacturers have spent the past two years working with the Consumer Product Safety Commission to cut down on accidents, the American Cleaning Institute said in response to the study.

[Bloomberg]