Tide Pods. Photo: Shutterstock

A New Jersey woman says in a lawsuit that she suffered chemical burns from the rupture of a Tide Pods detergent capsule that she stashed in her bra to keep it away from her kids.

The brightly colored Tide Pods are said to resemble candy, and since their introduction in 2012, some children and adults have been hospitalized after ingesting them. Recently a bizarre internet meme has surfaced showing teenagers eating the laundry product in videos posted online.

So when Dana Arevalo of Paterson discovered her children playing with a Tide Pod, she immediately confiscated it. With nowhere else to put it that was out of the children's reach, she tucked it into her bra, then headed to the laundry room to put it away. But before she got to the laundry room, the capsule broke and spilled its contents, causing her to suffer chemical burns, her suit claims.

The burns resulted in permanent injuries, pain and suffering, and loss of enjoyment of life, and the plaintiff will be forced to expend money for medical and hospital treatment, the suit claims.

Arevalo brings claims for strict liability, products liability, latent defects, breach of warranty and failure to warn from Procter & Gamble, the maker of Tide Pods. She seeks compensatory and punitive damages, attorney fees and costs of suit.

The injury took place on Oct. 4, 2015, and Arevalo's suit was filed in state court in Passaic on Sept. 27, 2017. Procter & Gamble was served with the suit on Feb. 9 of this year and it removed the case to federal court on March 9.

While most attention has focused on the dangers of ingesting the contents of Tide Pods, they can cause significant injury to the skin, according to a September 2014 article from the Journal of Medical Toxicology. While such burns do not appear to be immediately life-threatening, they require hospital admission and conscious sedation for the purpose of wound care and debridement, the journal said. But conscious sedation, while a safe procedure, brings the risk of complications, the journal said.

And the magazine Consumer Reports said in July 2015 that it would no longer recommend laundry detergent pods because of their safety risks.

Arevalo's lawyer, Marisa Dominguez of Ricci, Fava & Bagley in Totowa, New Jersey, did not return a call about the case. Procter & Gamble is represented by H. Lockwood Miller III of Goldberg Segalla in Newark. He also did not return a call about the case.

Procter & Gamble faces a similar suit in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Dotel v. Procter & Gamble Manufacturing. In that case, which is still pending according to court documents, plaintiff Jennifer Dotel claims she suffered scarring to her left breast from an accident while using Tide Pods.

Dotel, of Northampton, Pennsylvania, was doing her laundry while wearing a bra without a blouse in October 2014 when she opened the container of Tide Pods and attempted to remove one. Several of the pods had stuck together, making it necessary for her to separate them before using them to launder her clothing, according to her suit. As she was separating the pods, one of them ruptured and discharged its contents in a stream, striking the plaintiff on the left breast, her suit claims.

Dotel's suit said she will need plastic surgery to achieve a full recovery.