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Teenagers Are Still Eating Tide Pods, But Don't Expect A Product Redesign
If you've never seen it, a Tide Pod looks like a little rounded packet, white with two separate swirls of blue and orange liquid. To be clear, a Tide Pod is laundry detergent heavily concentrated into a single packet, meant to dissolve in water and clean a single load of laundry. But these days, it's a dare — an Internet meme, in which teenagers try to eat Tide Pods as a "challenge." The trend picked up in December, but the pace of poisonings is still getting worse. So far in January alone, poison control centers have received 134 reports of "intentional exposures" to laundry packets, Tide or others. That's compared with 53 cases the American Association of Poison Control Centers reported for all of 2017, mostly involving teenagers.
[...] Designs like this are never willy-nilly, says Chris Livaudais, executive director of the Industrial Designers Society of America. The process starts by studying the habits of a potential user to find ways to make their life better in some way. In this case, the condensed formula does away with a heavy jug and the need for measurement.
[...] The colors are already associated with liquid detergent, Livaudais says. And the swirls "might imply how active the ingredients are and how well it would do the washing job."
Jones says the swirls were indeed a design choice — indicating that the pod brings together three ingredients (cleaning, stain-fighting and brightening, he says). The pod is transparent because customers have told Tide they like to know what they're putting into the wash with their clothes.
Livaudais says industrial designers spend a lot of time mulling best and worst case scenarios for the use of products. But if someone knowingly chooses to misuse them? "That's completely out of our hands," he says.
National Poison Help hotline: 1-800-222-1222.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday January 31 2018, @08:56PM (11 children)
Don't conflate eating Tide Pods with trying MJ. MJ has *never* killed anyone, you don't jump off buildings, and you don't suck dick in a bathroom stall to get it.
The implied character deficiencies you put on drug users also has nothing to do with the complete lack of any common sense or self preservation that goes along with stupid stunts like this. Tide Pods are up there with the Russians filming themselves hanging from skyscrapers. There is only the barest chance you'll survive either activities. These kids are not already addicted to mind altering drugs before doing so, and Tide Pods are certainly not an addictive product, so you can't conflate those urges either.
You are correct though, I don't think kids in my day would do anything remotely that stupid. Not eat chemicals like they're food. Maybe jumping off a bridge into the water, or some other alpha male stunt to get girls attention, but nothing so dramatically stupid.
I don't know how to explain this latest extreme stupidity. Almost need SpongeBob Squarepants here warning us that this isn't stupidity, but *advanced* stupidity.
Nobody was stupid enough to eat Tide Pods in my generation that hasn't been dead for a few decades already.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Wednesday January 31 2018, @09:38PM (6 children)
It has - are lots of documented cases. I mean, bailing accidents has been known to crush people, and not to mention all those years it was used for hanging and all the poor sailors that got tangled in ropes when ships was sinking.
Also are a few cases of suspected allergical reactions with fatal outcomes. (Allergies exists to pretty much everything)
(A quick search seems to place cannabis as about as dangerous as some nuts)
(Yes, I know what you intended with your post, but the "there is a magical plant that never has killed anyone despite this being a statistical unlikely even even if the plant wasn't psychoactive nor the main source of ropes for centuries" sets me off)
Evidently you have less fun friends than I have. :)
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday January 31 2018, @10:22PM (5 children)
Uhhhh, there is a big difference between dying from a a 100lb bag of salt being dropped on you, and eating 100lbs of salt within a few years. Not sure why you are set off because I claimed that the recreational use of weed has not killed anyone, but a bail of hemp has.
You admit as the end it may be as dangerous as nuts to some people. That's true. I've never heard of a recreational MJ user die from it. Maybe some have died from industrial accidents while on MJ, but still, that is a different situation in of itself too. People drink on the job and have accidents to, but we don't equate alcohol usage with imminent death either.
Where is the documented case that somebody died from MJ use? I would like to see it and evaluate it for myself. If it's a dumbass that jumped off the roof into the pool and died, I've seen people do things that stupid while sober. I need something where the MJ itself was the cause of death.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 31 2018, @10:51PM (2 children)
i am getting emphysema from my habbit
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Wednesday January 31 2018, @11:19PM (1 child)
Dude - stop inhaling paper, use a hookah instead (while still harmful it is (rumoured to be) a lot less so, in any case it is less annoying).
And if possible - stop using tobacco as well.
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Thursday February 01 2018, @12:41PM
Hookah is nice, but if you have a few hundred to drop, a quality vaporizer will do you good. Taking a break once in a while is good too - tolerance isn't a race to the highest, it's something to be managed. I've always preferred smoking blunts myself though. A grenadier will burn for nearly an hour with a gram in it.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Wednesday January 31 2018, @11:12PM (1 child)
(:aside: Hmm.. *ponders* 100lbs is ~45kg. 45 / 365 ~ .13, or about 130g. Let's assume "a few" means "five" 26g... Yeah, I'd say the difference is that having the salt dropped on you is a more pleasant way to die (if "a few" means "ten" you'd probably survive unless your death was caused by lousy genetic facitilated by salt and lifestyle) (would be better to take 200lbs or 100kg if using that rhetoric again) :end aside:)
It sets me off since "MJ" or "Marijuana" refers to the plant itself (Marijuana originally only referred to the plant, or possibly the seeds if we want to go back to pre-mexican), and many people has died from the plant (only a small fraction of that being from the smoke of the plant)
(None-rope or bailing below)
All cases of death or hospitalization I've read about has been due to eating food with hemp in them (well, excepting for having arteries clogged due to bad injections - but I tend to categorize that as improper preparation of injection rather than substance) (usually hempseed, but cannabis oil [ie "cannabis butter"] has occured as well)
I would need a pubmed account to dig up documentation of actual deaths but to take a close call (as in - would have been dead without treatment) that was fairly easy to google up http://medind.nic.in/daa/t14/i1/daat14i1p192.pdf [medind.nic.in]
I'd equate alchol usage with imminent death - with the notable exception of ethanol in non-insane doses (also - not that uncommon for people being drunk choking on their own vomit or falling asleep in positions that causes asphyxia or decide to sleep naked in the snow). (And yes, usage. One friend killed himself intentionally by drinking a non-ethanol, another friend tried but ended up in intensive care and then a psychiatric ward)
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday February 01 2018, @12:04AM
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/29/marijuana-name-cannabis-racism [theguardian.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday January 31 2018, @10:08PM
Don't conflate eating Tide Pods with trying MJ.
I'm sorry that wasn't more obvious, but I wasn't conflating these at all, I was just commenting that none of my friends (AFAICT) were drug users, and years later, I'd guess that one of them is probably a MJ user, which is (as you said) relatively harmless, and not at all like other street drugs that are very destructive.
You are correct though, I don't think kids in my day would do anything remotely that stupid. Not eat chemicals like they're food. Maybe jumping off a bridge into the water, or some other alpha male stunt to get girls attention, but nothing so dramatically stupid.
Yep, me too. The stupidest thing kids in my generation and social class did that I remember was mainly driving poorly.
I don't know how to explain this latest extreme stupidity.
I don't either, but it's pretty apparent to me that kids these days just aren't like kids when I was that age. There's huge differences, such as how I was able to wander around outside for miles with no supervision at under 10 years of age, whereas now that would result in police action, child neglect charges, etc. I have a friend with an 8yo boy and I wouldn't trust that kid to get in out of the rain, much less bike for miles around the neighborhood alone, or go to school by himself, but I was doing just that at his age when my single mother was away at work.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Wednesday January 31 2018, @11:23PM (2 children)
Where I live, drug-driving now kills more people per year than drink-driving (3rd year in a row). The drug mix has been shifting from cannabis to amphetamines, however a significant proportion of road fatalities involved people with MJ in their system.
Drivers with THC in their system show a strong over-representation in fatalities against the percentage of use in the community:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14642878 [nih.gov]
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday February 01 2018, @02:10AM
Although regrettable, that doesn't mean MJ kills anymore that alcohol kills drunk drivers. What killed them both was the sudden stop. MJ intrinsically is not fatal, nor does it cause fatalities on its own. Stupid behavior always kills though, and altered states and driving have never mixed. I'm not condoning operating heavy machinery or vehicles while under the influence.
For that matter, I'm all for restricting driving to AI machines (after a few more generations and failures) since humans have demonstrated that they cannot BOTH be addicted to a smart phone and actually concentrate on driving a car. The smart phone wins, and kills more than any MJ users do. Smart phone users under the influence are even worse.
So while I don't see a huge increase in fatalities from MJ use where I live (most people figured out what they can handle apparently), I do see a huge upsurge in bullshit related to people looking at their damn phones while driving.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday February 02 2018, @04:03AM
Where I am, the leading cause of motor vehicle accidents is distracted driving, aka cell phone usage. Drunk driving deaths are at a historical low and don't hear too much about drug caused accidents besides a campaign from the government discouraging teens from driving while high and reminders that the cops will come down on you hard if they suspect any kind of impairment while driving.