US student hospitalised after taking the 'Tide Pod challenge'

A dangerous social media trend has sent a US student to hospital after she ate laundry detergent.

Eric Warren, the director of media relations at Utah State University, confirmed that a student ate a Tide Pod on Saturday afternoon in on-campus housing and was rushed to hospital, where she remains.

The 'Tide Pod challenge' began sweeping social media late last year, and involves people (mostly teenagers) filming themselves eating a pod of laundry detergent from the Tide brand, which looks like a lolly.

The concentrated detergent the pods contain is highly alkaline, and can cause vomiting and irritation in the mouth. The chemical taste will cause most people to spit the liquid out, but if it's swallowed, it can burn the oesophagus and stomach, and cause diarrhoea and vomiting.

If the person eating the pod accidentally inhales while the liquid is in their mouth, their trachea and lungs may also be burnt by the liquid, which can cause breathing difficulties and can, in extreme cases, be fatal.

Procter & Gamble, which owns and manufactures Tide detergent, has pleaded with people not to take part in the challenge, recruiting Rob Gronkowski, a popular gridiron player, to film a video criticising the trend. 

"We hope everyone takes this seriously: laundry pacs must only be used for their intended purposes,” P&G said in a statement.

YouTube and Facebook have started cracking down on videos promoting the craze, with a representative of Google (which owns YouTube) commenting in a statement: "YouTube's Community Guidelines prohibit content that's intended to encourage dangerous activities that have an inherent risk of physical harm. We work to quickly remove flagged videos that violate our policies."

According to CBS, at least 10 deaths in the US have been linked to ingesting these pods unrelated to the challenge – two were toddlers while eight were seniors with dementia.