The makers of Lysol, the Washington State Emergency Management Division, and the Environmental Protection Agency all scrambled to do damage control after President Trump appeared to suggest injecting people with disinfectants could be a possible cure for COVID-19. During Thursday night’s White House press briefing, an official from the Department of Homeland Security said that they’re studying whether household cleaners like bleach and rubbing alcohol can kill the coronavirus on inanimate, non-living surfaces.
The President responded by stating, “And then I see disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute — one minute — and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that. So, that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me,” Trump said.
Disinfectants are very good at killing microbes on surfaces outside of the body. But to be clear, they’re harsh chemicals: if you inject or ingest them, they’re far more likely to poison or kill you than they are to poison or kill the virus. Calls to poison hotlines around cleaners and disinfectants are already much higher than normal, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says appears to be related to coronavirus-related cleaning efforts.
The manufacturer of Lysol put out a statement stressing that their products should not be used inside the human body. “We must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route),” they said. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) followed by stating that disinfectants shouldn’t be ingested, though they didn’t indicate what prompted the warning, and the Washington State Emergency Management Division shared this statement on Twitter:
Please don’t eat tide pods or inject yourself with any kind of disinfectant.
If you do need help with #COVID19 issues, we have lots of resources at https://coronavirus.wa.gov/
Just don’t make a bad situation worse.
The New York State Department of Health also put out a warning about cleaning products on Twitter, as did the US Consumer Product Safety Commission:
QUINN THE QUARANTINE FOX: Cleaning products are poisonous, America! Make sure you keep those cleaning products in their original bottles and locked up out of sight and out of reach of kids!
The White House Press Secretary said in a follow-up statement issued on Friday that President Trump’s statements were taken out of context. “President Trump has repeatedly said that Americans should consult with medical doctors regarding coronavirus treatment,” the statement read.
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