A mum in the US has made a public warning about the hazard of making homemade slime. Her eleven-year-old daughter received 3rd-degree burns on her hands due to excessive exposure to the popular home craft activity.
Siobhan Quinn thought she found a parenting win against the battle of electronics and social media with her daughter, Kathleen, by encouraging her to get crafty in the kitchen.
But she didn’t realise there was a danger to excessive exposure of one of the ingredients needed to make the slime.
“I thought it was great,” she said. “I encouraged it, bought all the stuff, and then when they were gone, I bought more. She was being a little scientist…(Now), I feel terrible. I feel like the worst mother.”
Kathleen headed to a friend’s house for a sleepover and in the middle of the night, the fifth-grader woke up with her fingers feeling very hot and tingly.
When Kathleen returned home the next day, her mum was alarmed to see the state of her daughter’s hands.
“She was crying in pain, ‘my hands hurt, my hands hurt,'” Siobhan said. “When we looked at them, they were covered in blisters.”
Kathleen was taken straight to Southshore Hospital, where doctors diagnosed the blisters as second and third degree burns caused by prolonged exposure to borax, one of the main ingredients of the homemade slime.
“You just have to really read the packages, know what you’re mixing,” Dr. Megan Hannon said. “Because there are certain things in the home that are just dangerous.”
Kathleen’s hands are healing, but as a result of her burns, she sleeps with her hands in splints and has had a week off school.
Siobhan has talked to media to raise a warning to parents about the dangers of making homemade slime.
Despite the warning, the mum has received criticism from other mums saying they’ve made it before with their children and their children are fine.
Siobhan’s response was, “We made it a million times, too, and nothing else happened,” until Kathleen woke up in excruciating pain from the prolonged exposure.
Always check the chemicals used when making homemade slime and/or consider using gloves when making the craft activity.
