“These practices pose a risk of severe tissue damage and corrosive injury and should be strictly avoided.”
June 5, 2020
STAT News – To try to kill the novel coronavirus, some Americans are unsafely using disinfectants and cleaners, including washing food with bleach, using the products on bare skin, and inhaling and ingesting them, federal health officials reported Friday.
Health experts caution explicitly against using cleaning products in those ways.
The findings come from an online survey of 502 adults conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in May.
Thirty-nine percent had misused the cleaning products, and one quarter reported “an adverse health effect that they believed was a result” of the products. Further:
- 19% said they had used bleach on food,
- 18% said they had applied household cleaners to their skin,
- 10% said they had misted themselves with disinfectant sprays,
- 6% had inhaled vapors from the cleaners, and
- 4% had drunk or gargled diluted bleach solutions, soapy water, or other disinfectants.
CDC researchers wrote:
“Although adverse health effects reported by respondents could not be attributed to their engaging in high-risk practices, the association between these high-risk practices and reported health effects indicates a need for public health messaging regarding safe and effective cleaning practices …”
The paper does not mention President Trump’s public questioning at a press conference in April of whether an “injection inside” the body of a disinfectant could kill the virus.
His remarks led poison control centers and manufacturers of cleaning products to reiterate that disinfectants and cleaners should not be ingested, inhaled, or injected.
The president later claimed he was trying to prank reporters with his remarks … Read more.
