Metal Flakes Found in Children's Vitamins Sends Little Girl to ER, Says Mother
Shopping, choosing food for and feeding their families is one of the most mundane-yet-crucial tasks a parent can have. It’s one thing to decide what we will eat, but to be responsible for other people’s health and well-being? That’s an entirely different matter.
Parents generally try to find things their kids will enjoy. Those who are health-conscious look for things their child will eat but that will still be healthy in some way.
But there are dangers lurking in the most innocuous places, as one family from Overland Park, Kansas, found out this week. Samantha Anderson has been using Zarbees gummy vitamins with her daughter for some time and has never had a problem before.
As she was going to give her daughter Milani one earlier this week, she had to dump them out since they were almost gone and the last few were sticking to each other. When they fell out onto the plate, several metal flakes fell out of the bottle, too.
Horrified, Anderson realized not only were loose flakes in the container, some of the gummies had pieces embedded inside of them.
“My husband said, ‘Take a magnet and see if it sticks,’ and sure enough the magnet picked them right up,” she told WDAF-TV. Their pediatrician gave them further direction, and the conscientious mother posted their findings on Facebook.
“Sooo we found some metal flakes in the bottom of Milani’s chewable multivitamin bottle,” she wrote. “The flakes were even embedded in the surface area of the vitamins ?”
“There’s 55 servings in a bottle and she’s had about 50 so who knows how many metal flakes she ingested ? Her pediatrician told us to take her to the ER so here we are, waiting for xrays right now. Say a prayer for my princess! ?”
A little later, the results showed that while Milani didn’t have a lot of metal show up, some flakes had made it into her system and was in her intestines.
“Now we have to watch for bloody stools, pain or fever. The doc also told us to contact the FDA so we did that immediately. I contacted Zarbees as well. The rep apologized and offered to mail some coupons to my house…???”
“Please check your children’s containers and share my post!”
Plenty of other parents were offended by Zarbee’s meager offer of coupons in exchange for having their gaffe pointed out. Anderson knows how this could have happened, but isn’t satisfied with Zarbee’s answer or offer.
“Food is mass produced these days, and metal machines will break apart,” the mother said. “And I guess pieces will fall into the production line, but there’s supposed to be tools or people in place to catch those things.”
“I fed these to her,” Anderson continued. “I feel like I have failed. I feel terrible that this metal is in her stomach.”
Have you ever encountered anything like this?
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