A student at ThunderRidge High School had to be treated in the nurse’s office Friday after biting into a Tide Pod.
A statement from the Douglas County School District says the Tide Pod in question was brought by another student, and the matter is being addressed by school staff.
The student who bit the pod is in good health, according to the statement.
This happens as the so-called “Tide Pod Challenge” has prompted warnings across the country – and forced YouTube to remove certain videos that show people taking bites out of laundry detergent packets.
RELATED: Tide Pod Challenge: Teens are putting detergent pods in their mouth and posting videos online
The American Association of Poison Control Centers says in recent weeks, it’s received more reports of teenagers intentionally eating laundry packets than it did in all of 2016.
The Rocky Mountain Poison Center reports there have been 134 calls about people eating detergent since October. The RMPC covers Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada and Hawaii. Eight of those calls involved intentional misuse like these dares and seven of them happened in Colorado.
"Ages range from 13 years up to 25 years," Shireen Banerji, the center's clinical manager, said "All of our cases have involved males."
Aside from eating the plastic wrapped around the detergent, Banerji said people who eat the pods are also swallowing chemicals, perfumes and foaming agents. Any single one of those components is enough to make a person sick.
"It's not something that your body wants to digest," she said. "They're detergents. They're soaps. they're heavy duty soaps. When you eat a soap, you're going to vomit."
The problem has gotten so big that Procter & Gamble, Tide’s parent company, enlisted New England Patriots star Rob Gronkowski to tell people not to take part in the challenge.
The American Association of Poison Control Centers warns that eating Tide Pods (or similar products) can lead to “excessive vomiting, wheezing and gasping.”
Breathing problems are also possible – and some victims have needed to use ventilators to breathe.
