Teen Violently Ill After Making Homemade Slime, Sends Grave Warning to Other Kids
Slime. If you have kids, you probably know what this is on a first-hand basis.
We don’t mean the product of a runny nose or something the dog sneezes up — it’s that brightly colored, irresistible goo that ranks just as high — if not higher — than Play-Doh.
It makes weird noises, it picks up and consumes all sorts of small items, but it doesn’t melt in kids’ hands or crumble apart and dry up, lurking in the carpet.
Part of what has made slime so popular is the many different variations it can take. Glitter, glow-in-the-dark, neon, rainbow — you name it, it’s been tried.
The fact that it’s easy to make at home with just a few simple ingredients has made it even more accessible. But there’s one ingredient that could cause a lot of trouble, and one young lady is on a mission to raise awareness about its nefarious side effects.
Jessica Moreland, a 16-year-old from Newcastle, England, started making the addicting goo. She thought her younger cousins would love the stuff, so she started making batches of it.
“Everyone was doing it and I wanted to join in too. I made loads,” she said. “I was nearly making it every day.”
Shortly after she began making the slime in a shed in her backyard, she began to feel ill. She was dizzy, her lungs hurt, and she couldn’t catch her breath.
“I had headaches and I started to feel really sick,” she said. “I started becoming really, really ill. I had headaches and stomachaches and felt sick.”
This went on for several weeks before Jessica’s grandmother decided enough was enough and took her to the doctor. The doctor quickly identified the culprit.
“I thought I had picked up a virus,” Jessica continued. “I went to the doctors. They asked me what I had been up to, what did I like doing, and I said I had been making slime and it was using borax.”
“They said it is really, really high in toxic chemicals and it was making me really poorly. All the fumes were entering my body and it was making me poorly. After that I stopped making it.”
Her mother noticed the effects immediately when she was around the slime-making operation.
“It was only when I was sat in the cabin with her, with the door closed, chatting to her when she was making this stuff, I got a right headache,” she said.
“I felt sick and I was getting this stinking headache, and I said to her ‘stop making that stuff’ and took her to the doctor.”
“I’m worried about other kids,” Jessica said. “If kids are around it all the time, it could be really dangerous. I didn’t think it was harmful and they think the same.”
Not all recipes call for borax, so your slime-making routines — if you have them — don’t need to stop. Just make sure you’re using safer alternatives, like cornstarch.
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