By Johnny Edwards
Atlanta Journal Constitution
Two people in Georgia drank liquid cleaning products over the weekend in misguided attempts to ward off COVID-19, according to the Georgia Poison Center. Both men had histories of psychiatric problems and are expected to recover.
The poison center’s director, Gaylord Lopez, said he did not know if the men guzzled the chemicals because they heard about President Donald Trump’s statements during a Thursday White House briefing, when the president wondered aloud if coronavirus could be treated by injecting a disinfectant into the human body.
Since the pandemic began, at least two other Georgians have fallen ill from similar attempts to clean their inner organs with household chemicals, even before Trump’s remarks.
So far, though, the state’s biggest spike in poisonings from cleaning products has been caused by home-bound Georgians mixing products together to furiously scrub surfaces, then falling ill from inhaling fumes. Last year, the poison center handled 49 product-mixing calls in March and April. This year, since March 1 the center has had 115 calls, Lopez said.
“When you mix bleach with certain types of chemicals, you produce a reaction that can cause release of noxious and toxic gases, and if you inhale enough of this stuff, you can induce a chemical pneumonia,” Lopez said.
The same trend has played out across the country with the CDC recommending disinfecting high-touch surfaces, and panicked shoppers clearing store shelves of such products as Clorox, Lysol and hand sanitizer.
In the first three months of the year, calls to poison centers about exposures to household cleaners and disinfectants rose 20 percent. “There appears to be a clear temporal association with increased use of these products,” the CDC noted in a report last week.
Georgia has also seen a rise in cases of children ingesting chemicals because their parents, distracted while working from home, left them unattended around unsecured bottles of fluid and medicines, Lopez said. Overall, poison calls have risen 9 percent this year.
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