That Homemade Slime Your Kids Are Obsessed With May Cause Skin Burns

Moms warns that common homemade slime ingredients may cause skin burns

Homemade slime is all the rage, something you probably know if you have kids between the ages of 3 and 13 or have tried to buy Elmer’s glue lately. Parents love how the goo is cheap to make, quiet to play with and keeps kids occupied for hours. But with reports popping up of kids getting serious skin burns from DIY slime, homemade might not mean “safe.”

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Like so many kids, for the past few month’s Sibhon Quinn’s daughter Kathleen has been making homemade slime. The 11-year old got really into it, making slime every day. She even sold some of her gooey creations at school. Her mother loved that her daughter was developing a hobby which gave her a break from electronics. “I thought it was great,” Quinn told WCVB5 . “I encouraged it, bought all the stuff. Then when they were gone, I bought more. She was being a little scientist.”

But recently while at a sleepover, Kathleen woke up in the middle of the night with her hands tingling and burning. By the time her parents picked her up the next morning, Kathleen’s hands were covered in blisters. She was in tears from the pain.

The Quinns rushed their daughter to the hospital, where they learned that the blisters were likely caused by prolonged exposure to the ingredient borax in the homemade slime she’d been making. “I feel terrible,” said her mother. “I feel like the worst family.”

Kathleen’s blisters were actually second and third-degree skin burns. She should make a full recovery, but she’s missed a week of school and has to sleep with her hands in splints.

While borax isn’t known to irritate skin just through casual contact, overexposure can result in peeling and redness.

Quinn isn’t the only parent who’s child was injured after playing with homemade slime. UK mom Rebekha D’Stephano posted photos of the awful skin burns her own daughter received after playing with two ingredient homemade slime created with glue and laundry detergent. Her doctor believes it was the laundry detergent that lead to her burns.

“She started with blisters, then her skin peeled and now it’s burnt from chemical burns!!!” D’Stephano writes. Her daughter may need plastic surgery on her hands to repair the damage.

Quinn hopes other parents will heed her warning so no other child has to go through what her daughter did. “I’ve had other moms say, ‘Oh, we’ve made it a million times. It’s fine. Nothing happened to my child.’ We made it a million times too and nothing else happened.”