WASHINGTON (SOA) — 5/10/24 UPDATE: A bipartisan bill was introduced in the Senate to ban the sale of water beads marketed to children as toys. In January, Spotlight on America reported about the dangers of water beads and the mission to get the product banned by moms of children harmed by the product. Click on our report above to WATCH our story about the dangers of water beads.
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Water Beads are the latest children’s product where serious injuries piled up for years, but not until after a child died was there a limited recall. The government agency tasked with protecting Americans from dangerous products says its hands are tied when it comes to warning the public, but could they be doing more?
Spotlight on America National Investigative Correspondent Angie Moreschi is pushing for answers on why it takes so long to protect the public from dangerous products and why efforts to change that seem to be going nowhere.
Water beads are tiny, colorful balls made of super-absorbent polymer that look like candy sprinkles, and when water is added, can grow up to 100-times their original size. They’re squishy and fun and became very popular with kids, but the sensory toys can cause immeasurable harm to a small child who swallows them.
Florida mom Sara Gent remembers the sheer terror of watching her little boy Henry become violently ill after accidentally ingesting water beads in December of 2022.
“It was projectile vomiting blood, over and over again. At one point, I just kind of lost it, and I was like, ‘He's gonna die. We need to do something. He's gonna die,” Sara remembered telling the emergency room staff in a panic.Today, the family is grateful their sweet, rambunctious toddler survived, but he almost didn't make it.
“This is my baby boy. He's the love of my life. It was horrible. It’s still hard to talk about a year later,” Sara told Spotlight on America, as she shared her story to warn others. “I don't want other families to go through what we've gone through the last year.”
The beads absorb body fluid
The Gents had purchased a Buffalo Games Chuckle and Roar activity kit for their older daughter. It had lots of fun sensory items for kids to play with, like sand, confetti, and, yes, water beads. Sara says they always supervised play but believes a few of the tiny beads must have spilled out onto the floor remaining hidden, until Henry, months later, crawling around, found them.
The beads absorbed fluid in Henry’s body and grew inside him. Slowly, he became violently ill. At first, the Gents had no idea what was causing Henry to be so sick, but at the hospital, a shocking moment revealed the cause.
Henry threw up a total of three of the enlarged colorful balls, but his symptoms did not subside. Over the next 30 hours, he continued to get worse. They did multiple tests, including an x-ray, ultrasound, and scope of his GI tract. While they found large bloody wounds in his abdomen where the water beads had sat, initially, hospital staff did not see any more inside him.
As Henry's condition continued to deteriorate, a surgeon decided to do emergency exploratory surgery and found another water bead. It had grown into a clear golf ball sized blob obstructing his bowel.
“He would have died if they didn't take it out almost immediately,” his mom said, fighting back tears.
Multiple children harmed before
Henry is doing better now, but his parents say he will have life-long complications from the invasive surgery. They don't understand why there was no official warning about the blockage risk before Henry's injury, despite multiple previous reports of the danger to the toy industry and government.
“It makes me so angry,” Sara said. “They should have been protected. This shouldn't have happened.”
The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the agency tasked with protecting Americans from dangerous products, revealed last year that 7800 children were treated in hospital emergency rooms for water bead injuries, between 2016 and 2022.
Unfortunately, that critical information came too late for the Gents and several other children.
Just six months after Henry nearly died, a baby girl in Wisconsin, 10-month-old Esther Bethard, did die, after ingesting water beads in July of 2023.
“My days feel very empty. She should still be with us,” Taylor Bethard, Esther’s mom, told Spotlight on America.
Two months after Esther’s death, in September of 2023, the CPSC and toy manufacturer Buffalo Games finally issued a joint recall of 52,000 Chuckle and Roar Ultimate Water Beads Activity Kits.
“It should not have taken the death of my 10-month-old for that to happen,” Taylor Bethard said, angrily.Even more upsetting to her and other safety advocates was that the recall was for just the specific product involved in Esther’s death. Multiple other products, including another Chuckle and Roar kit with water beads, remained legal to sell.
“The frustration and anxiety to see (similar) products on the shelf where another family could purchase, it's scary. It makes me nauseous,” Taylor said.
At that time, Chair of the CPSC Alex Hoehn-Saric did issue an additional warning about all water beads, saying they can be "deadly to babies and small children" and "the risk is not limited to a single product."
Dangerous pattern
Product liability attorney Dan Mann, who represents the Bethard family, says we’ve seen this dangerous pattern too many times before.
“This was such a preventable incident (Esther’s death), and that's what makes it such an awful, awful tragedy. And then, you learn about the host of other children who suffered similar injuries,” Mann said. “It just breaks your heart. And the reaction of most people is how could this ever happen?”
But it has happened, time and time again, including:
- Malm dressers (at least 8 child deaths)
- Peloton Treadmill (at least 1 child death & 70 serious injuries)
- Boppy Pillow (at least 8 child deaths)
- Fisher Price Rock ‘n Play (more than 100 child deaths)
CPSC blames slow warning process on legal limitations
“If I knew a product was killing people right now, I couldn't tell you,” CPSC Chair Hoehn-Saric made that made that startling statement to Spotlight on America, one year ago.
At the time, he criticized a provision in product safety law called Rule 6(b) which limits the agency's ability to warn the public about dangerous products, without first trying to get a company's consent.
In February of 2023, Hoehn-Saric proposed an internal CPSC rule change he said would give the government agency more flexibility to get information out faster, but it's still not implemented.
We went back to CPSC headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland to find out why.
ANGIE MORESCHI: It's been a year now really since it was initially proposed. Why is this taking so long?
HOEHN-SARIC: Yeah, I believe it's taking too long. I would like to get it done faster. I'd like to get the support of all my fellow commissioners to be able to get this done in the end of the day.
Spotlight on America contacted the three other CPSC commissioners, but they did not respond to our request for comment.
In a previous written statement on the proposed changes, Commissioner Rich Trumka, Jr. has said he opposed the proposed update to “the gag rule,” because it does not go far enough. “It fails to improve our ability to communicate important safety information to the public as rapidly and completely as the statute allows,” Trumka wrote.
Commissioner Peter Feldman wrote in his statement online that he had “concerns” about the proposal and wants to “ensure accuracy and fairness” (for manufacturers) when issuing warnings and recalls.
Commissioner Mary Boyle did not take a strong stand on the proposed rule change in her written statement saying, she looks “forward to reviewing comments from stakeholders and to advancing the goal of sharing information widely to promote safety.”
The public comment period for the proposed rule changed ended in April of last year, but it has yet to be implemented or even voted on by the commission.
ANGIE MORESCHI: Comments closed about nine months ago. What's the hold up?
HOEHN-SARIC: The hold-up really is going through the process that we have to go through and getting the support from the commission to be able to get it completed.
The CPSC says the agency is in the process of amending the proposed rule change but told Spotlight on America there is no set deadline or time frame for that to be made public.
In the meantime, Hoehn-Saric says he is pushing the commission to be more aggressive in issuing warnings and recalls.
HOEHN-SARIC: Over the last year, we've done about 25 warnings to the public about products that we know are potentially dangerous. That's more warnings than we've put out in the last five years combined.
ANGIE MORESCHI: Do you feel like the CPSC is doing enough to protect the public from dangerous products?
HOEHN-SARIC: I'd like for us to be doing more, but we are doing what we can with the restrictions that we have.
Families left frustrated
After coming so close to losing their precious child, Henry’s mom Sara Gent says she resents those restrictions that help keep dangerous products secret.
“It feels like the retailers and these companies are having better protection laws than we are for our children and their lives. That blows your mind a little bit.”
Grassroots campaign for safety
With the CPSC bogged down in bureaucratic red tape, a group of moms is taking up the fight to get all water beads banned. Their grass roots effort is seeing some success, as several major retailers have agreed to stop selling water beads to kids.
In our next report, Spotlight on America goes in-depth with the woman leading the charge to ban water beads and finds out whether retailers are living up to their promises to stop selling them.
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