Alex Brandon / AP
President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House, Thursday, April 23, 2020, in Washington.
Wednesday, April 29, 2020 | 2 a.m.
Crowds at Las Vegas-area markets have thinned, and items like eggs, chicken and even toilet paper are again readily available as the COVID-19 panic shopping has ceased. But cruise down the cleaning aisles and you’ll still find shelves mostly empty of bleach and hand sanitizers.
Increased use of those chemical-based products might have contributed to an uptick of calls to poison control centers across the U.S. in March, according to a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In one reported incident, a woman accidentally made chlorine gas by mixing bleach, vinegar and hot water to disinfect her produce.
She heard in the news that she should clean all her groceries before eating them, the study said. The gas interfered with her breathing, and made her cough and wheeze, so she called 911 and was hospitalized.
In another instance, a toddler took swigs of a 64-ounce bottle of alcohol-based hand sanitizer, became dizzy, fell and hit her head, according to the report. Had the child been 21 and a motorist, her blood alcohol level was over three times the legal limit.
This was before President Donald Trump theorized last week in a briefing that scientists should test whether disinfectants could be injected into humans to treat COVID-19. He later walked back his comments and said he was being sarcastic. CDC only has data on poison calls through the end of March, although officials in Maryland, Illinois and New York City reported an increase in calls since Trump's remarks, according to reports.
“I was asking the question sarcastically to reporters like you, just to see what would happen,” Trump said the following day.
His “sarcasm” forced disinfectant companies to quickly issue statements warning that disinfectants shouldn’t be injected.
“We must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route),” said a statement from the parent of the company that makes Lysol and Dettol, Reckitt Benckiser.
“Bleach and other disinfectants are not suitable for consumption or injection under any circumstances” declared the Clorox Co.
And the U.S. Surgeon General’s Office tweeted a reminder to all Americans: “PLEASE always talk to your health provider first before administering any treatment/medication to yourself or a loved one.”
In Maryland, after receiving more than 100 calls to its hotline, the Maryland Emergency Management Agency tweeted this alert: “This is a reminder that under no circumstances should any disinfectant product be administered into the body through injection, ingestion or any other route.”
The American Association of Poison Control Centers’ regional office in Colorado handles poison-related cases and inquires in Nevada. A request for data on the frequency of calls wasn’t provided.
Brian Hedlund, professor of life sciences at UNLV, said bleach is highly efficient at disinfecting surfaces but could also be “horrible” when misused. In fact, he added, “everything” people use to disinfect or even something as simple as clean their hands “is toxic against bacteria and viruses, but also against humans.”
While soaps can dry out hands, and bleach can burn them, the health issues worsen when the products are ingested, Hedlund said.
The CDC study examined data gathered from the 55 U.S. poison control centers, which received 45,550 calls related to cleaners and 17,392 calls linked to disinfectants from Jan. 1 to the end of March, or increases of 20% and 16%, respectively.
Children under age 5 are the most exposed, and most of the poisonings were due to ingestion, according to the report.
The sharpest increase occurred at the beginning of March, said the study, which noted that although the data don’t prove a “definite link” between the increase of calls and coronavirus cleaning efforts, there could be a “clearly temporal association.”
As the coronavirus has propagated itself through the U.S., health experts have recommended that Americans constantly wash their hands and properly clean and disinfect high-touch areas to mitigate the spread of the highly contagious respiratory illness. As stay-at-home orders kicked in, shelves emptied of soaps and chemicals.
Hedlund said that consumers should pay attention to the instructions and warning labels on the products, and especially be mindful when they say, “don’t ingest,” or “not for internal consumption.”
“It’s serious. I think we kind of underestimate this stuff sometimes,” he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
