Excuse me, but when you post an MSDS, I have to think it through. Well, the Ethoxylated polyethylene polyamine and the alchoholc (ethoxylated, sulfated, neutrolyzed have about a 5 g/kg LD50 (that’s the dose at which half of the test animals died - there will be a different number for rats than for mice, for example). So if you’re 150 lbs, you would be 331 kg, which means you’d have to eat 1650 grams or 3.6 pounds for half of you to die (assuming you’re a room full of lab animals).
You’d have to eat twice as much alcohols (sulfated, neutrolized). Same with the ethoxylated alcohols (and I don’t know why they give that one in mg rather than g). So unless there’s a synergistic action between them, the 3.6 pounds is a conservative number to use, especially since they’re not telling you how much is inert filler.
According to their website, the pods weigh 0.89 oz apiece. So you’d have to eat 64 of them to be smack in the middle of the theoretical danger zone. And there’s only 57 of them in a container. That’s going to act as something of a safety net.
Of course, if you’re only 20 pounds, it only takes a bit more than 8 of them to have a 50% chance to take you out. Or rather, 8 of them if they were nothing but their active ingredients, which they’re not. And if you were a rat, assuming they used rats, which I assume you’re not.
Where was I? Oh, yes. Eating pods is bad. They have numbers to prove it. Don’t do it.
They’re a new and exciting form factor, so people will buy them out of curiosity. Sales increase, at least for a little while. Whether they stay increased depends on whether they actually work better.
Hell, I know someone - a former Doper, in fact - who once drank a lava lamp (It did not stay down long). Granted, there was considerable alcohol in his system at the time, but people do weird, stupid, dumb stuff all the time.
I am not at all surprised to hear of people eating soap “pods”.
Pods are also more portable if you have to travel any distance to do your wash - elsewhere in an apartment building, to a laundromat, etc.
They’re also easy to give to others to use, which sadly contributed to the death of a 7-month-old whose mother, staying in a shelter, had been given some so she could do laundry. She put them in a basket next to where her infant was sleeping and stepped away for a short time.
Also, damn, that would be 1.6 ounces for a 20 pound child. That’s less than one and a half pods. Even assuming there’s inert filler, that’s solidly in the danger zone with the first pod. Not to mention that a toddler could choke on the plastic envelope.
When we travel we often stay in a timeshare with a washer and dryer - something like a pod packs really easy. Liquids don’t - you have to pack them in your luggage (no carryon) and they are heavy. Powders are sort of a mess to deal with out of a ziploc bag.
I’d imagine for a laundrymat they have similar benefits, the deal being that they are expensive compared to regular detergent. And people using laundrymats are often getting their detergent from the dollar store.
I just want to comment that the danger of the pods is not always death (which is horrible enough) but that if swallowed can damage the tissues of the mouth and throat causing permanent damage.
I haven’t used the Tide ones, but I discover that they are less effective, generally speaking. But then, at home, I use a homemade mix of washing soda, borax and naptha.
I like the Tide Pods because there is no mess, and they are convenient. No measuring and spilling, no having to clean out the receptacle where you put the detergent.
As far as cleaning clothes, I don’t think there’s any difference.
