Durbin: Industry should make safer laundry pods voluntarily

Democrats said they would drop their bill to make laundry and dish detergent packs safer if industry were to voluntarily develop new standards.

If the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) accepts those new rules from industry, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) said, there would be no need to move forward the bill she introduced in the House last month.

{mosads}The Detergent Poisoning and Child Safety (Detergent PACS) Act, which Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) also introduced in the Senate, would require the CPSC to direct manufacturers to make safer, child-resistant packaging for liquid detergent packets within 18 months of the bill’s passage.

The Democrats have written to the CPSC asking for new standards, but Durbin said Thursday that the government moves slowly.

“My basic plea is to the industry, starting with Procter & Gamble,” he said. “This is your product. You tell the people who are about to buy it you are friends of American families. Well, show it.”

P&G, an Ohio-based company that makes personal care and household cleaning products, should put basic protections in its packaging of detergent pods, Durbin said.

“Make it a little tougher for the kids to get into the package, but easy for adults,” he said.

P&G did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Despite their popularity, detergent packs, often referred to as pods, have been categorized as a danger to children because they deliver powerful chemicals in colorful, bite-sized packages that look like candy.

During a press conference Thursday, Nelson held up a clear little packet with white, pink and blue filling.

“That’s pretty attractive and it also feels really nice to the touch,” he said as he rubbed the packet on the side of his cheek. “And it smells good and it is water soluble, so when it goes in that little mouth, what’s going to happen?”

Nelson went on to compare the pods’ easy-to-open packaging to the packaging of liquid nicotine, which lawmakers are also trying to make child-proof.

“It ought to be common sense that things that are attractive are going to enter the mouth of an infant,” he said. 

From 2012 to 2013, the National Poison Data System received 17,230 calls involving children who had been exposed to the chemicals in the detergent packets.

The high concentrated solutions have caused seizures, vomiting of blood, fluid in the lungs, dangerously slow heartbeats, respiratory arrest, gastric burn and comas.

The American Cleaning Institute has called the proposed legislation unnecessary. 

“Manufacturers have already made major changes to their packaging including the addition of easy-to-understand safety icons, improving warning labels to advise proper use and storage instructions, and changing to opaque packaging so the laundry packets are not visible from the outside,” the trade association said in a statement.