Technically, yes, you can die if you inhaled or ingest a very large amount of laundry detergent — and a small child could die from a single pod if they got enough of it in their lungs," Anderson says. When laundry detergent pod ingestion is fatal, it's usually due to a combination of things that lead to respiratory distress. "It causes an inflammatory cascade — so you get the irritation in the lungs, go into acute respiratory distress, and that leads to swelling and fluid pooling into the lungs which can be fatal," Anderson says.
Pod ingestion can also cause seizures or comas, according to AAPCC. Another serious complication from eating detergent pods is called "esophagus strictures." In the long term, the burns from the detergent can cause esophageal scarring, Anderson says, which can result in the esophagus actually tightening. "This puts you at higher risk for food impactions and choking."
TL;DR: welp, they ded.
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