A mum has warned other families about the dangers of allowing your children to make slime when unsupervised, after a product in the recipe left her daughter with ‘chemical burns’.
Rebekha D’Stephano from Cheshire, shared photographs to her Facebook page of her daughter’s hands covered in blisters and redness, after she made the slime at home.
“She is in so much pain and she is being a warrior through it all,” said D’Stephano.
“It’s every parents nightmare to see your baby in pain.”
D’Stephano said her daughter, DeeJay, had been watching YouTube tutorials on how to make the ‘Unicorn Slime’ or ‘Tie Dye Slime’ and wanted to make some herself.
So the mother bought DeeJay all the necessary ingredients, explaining: “Three weeks later and we are looking at plastic surgery on her hands from a burns department at the hospital.”
D’Stephano said that it started with blisters, then DeeJay’s skin peeled, and later appeared as the chemical burns.
Warning other parents, she said simply: “Do not let them do this! There are no warnings on these YouTube channels at all.”
D’Stephano did not list the ingredients that she bought in the original post, but in the comments, she told concerned parents, that she had used laundry detergent mixed with glue, as specified in this YouTube tutorial.
Adding: “We are not sure [what caused it] but the detergent is an activator in the slime recipe. She might just be 1 in 1,000,000 but she has never had skin allergies before.”
Dr. Helen Webberley, GP for Oxford Online Pharmacy, told HuffPost UK: “This is a fun craze which kids seem to really enjoy and I’m all for anything that gets them away from the screen. But they need to be careful with the ingredients they use.
“My advice would be to make sure your kids are aware of the risks of using certain ingredients. Avoid using laundry detergent or other household cleaners and swap to cornflour - alternatively get them to wear rubber gloves so that the mixture doesn’t come into contact with bare skin.”
Borax is a salt of Boric acid that appears as a white powder and becomes colourless when dissolved in water - and has previously been flagged as being dangerous for children making slime.
If you want to make slime for your children, without laundry detergent or Borax, then all you need is clear PVA glue, water and salt. There are a few added extras including food colouring and glitter that are optional.