Detergent capsules and children

A liquid detergent capsule is brightly coloured, soft and squeezable. To a toddler it resembles a teething ring, a sweet or a toy. Estonia's Poison Information Centre reports that children usually find them in a container left on the floor.

The capsule film dissolves on contact with moisture — saliva or wet hands are enough. Inside is 30–43 ml of concentrated detergent, stronger than ordinary liquid detergent.

The Estonian Poison Information Centre compared two groups: conventional detergents caused health effects in 27% of cases, capsules in 72%.

Their current guidance is unambiguous: every child who swallows the liquid contents of a capsule needs hospital observation, because of the risk of corrosive injury.

The Estonian medical journal Eesti Arst has documented a case in which a two-year-old boy swallowed half a capsule's contents. His parents gave him water as first aid; the resulting foam was aspirated into his airways along with stomach contents. He was hospitalised with aspiration pneumonia, the cough persisted for years, and chemical lung damage developed.

In 2024 the poison information line advised on 4,503 cases. Close to a third — 1,410 — involved children up to the age of four.

The risk was serious enough for the EU to intervene. Since June 2015, liquid laundry capsules must meet specific CLP requirements: the outer packaging must be opaque with a child-impeding closure; the capsule film must withstand 300 newtons of compression, retain its contents for at least 30 seconds in water at 20 °C, and contain a bittering agent that produces a repulsive reaction within six seconds of mouth contact.

These measures have helped. Accidents still happen.

The Lehis box is kraft brown. It has no bright colours and no sweet-like shapes. The sheet is dry and flat — it isn't a squeezable pouch of liquid and it won't burst in a child's hand.

But Lehis is still detergent. It doesn't contain the bittering agent that makes a child spit a capsule straight out. Store the box exactly as you would any other household chemical: in a locked cupboard, at least 1.5 metres up, away from food and out of reach of children.

We're not telling you our product is safe. We're telling you it doesn't look like a sweet — and that the storage rule applies just the same.