Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Ed Yeates and Deanie Wimmer reportingYou've heard of purple, green and orange Gatorade and other drinks, but have you tried Fabuloso? Well DON'T! It's not a drink, but a cleaning product.
Fabuloso looks like something you should drink. It even smells sweet, almost like a basket of fruit. That's why the American College of Emergency Physicians is worried.
Poison Control Centers, like our own, are getting calls from folks who have been taking swigs of Fabuloso by mistake. In fact, researchers who looked at records from the Texas Poison Center documented 104 patients who called over a four month period this year. More than 60 percent involved children under the age of six.
Barbara Crouch says the younger the victim, the higher the risk.
Barbara Crouch, Utah Poison Control Center: "They're more likely to spontaneously vomit from this. In young children, we would really worry about dehydration from vomiting. A lot of irritation in the stomach and the larger the quantity, the higher the risk associated with that."
Eleven year old C.J. Gomez knows better at his age, but he smelled it for us and agreed, younger kids could easily drink this stuff. But it's not just kids. Brad Dahl says about half the calls coming into the Utah Poison Control Center about Fabuloso are older people.
Brad Dahl, Utah Poison Control Center: "A 16-year old boy out playing basketball came into the house. It's sitting on the counter and he grabbed a bottle of the product and drank quite a few swallows before he realized it was not a beverage."
While emergency physicians says Fabuloso with pictures of fresh fruit may be the most misleading, other products are catching fire as well.
For example: Tylenol Cold medicine in the Cool Blue Burst flavor. Alongside a berry Gatorade or even the no-name brand, easy to see a resemblance. Orange Fanta or Orange Pine-Sol, even with oranges on the label.
This isn't quite as close, but there's fingernail polish remover in peach and Welch's white grape peach drink.
Brad Dahl, Utah Poison Control Center: "We actually had a case where somebody had put the bottle in the refrigerator, obviously thinking it was a beverage. And then somebody else came along and grabbed it out of the refrigerator, and why wouldn't you think that something in the refrigerator is something you should be drinking?"
The Utah Poison Control Center and American's emergency room doctors are concerned misleading packaging may be to blame for a large number of accidental poisonings.
There's no research to suggest companies are intentionally trying to confuse consumers. But right now, fruity scents and bright colors are what sell.
Barbara Crouch/Utah Poison Control Center: "When you have a myriad of products on the market, you gotta have something that attracts someone you gotta get them to look at that product, and that certainly is the issue with some of the colors and smells."
While packaging is certainly under scrutiny, the Utah Poison Control Center says consumers have to take some responsibility. Isolate the products completely from children and keep them away from places where you eat and drink.
Barbara Crouch/Utah Poison Control Center: "When we're in a hurry, we grab things in a hurry and we don't necessarily scan the label as much as we should, so I think there's more of a risk for an adult to grab something like this and think it's a drink."
To Stay Safe, this problem really underscores the need to lock up all cleaning products. When you get home from the grocery store, they recommend to not even keep similar looking products together on the counter.
