Surveillance of paediatric exposures to liquid laundry detergent pods in Italy

Objective To analyse paediatric exposures to pod and traditional laundry detergents in Italy and changes in exposure trends. Methods Analyses of a series of patients aged <5 years and exposed to laundry detergents between September 2010 and June 2015, identified by the National Poison Control in Milan. Results In comparison with patients exposed to traditional laundry detergents (n=1150), a higher proportion of those exposed to pods (n=1649) were managed in hospital (68% vs 42%), had clinical effects (75% vs 22%) and moderate/high severity outcomes (13% vs <1%). Exposure rates were stable over time for traditional detergents (average 0.65 cases/day), but an abrupt decline in major company pods was seen in December 2012, 4 months after the introduction of opaque outer packaging (from 1.03 to 0.36 cases/day and from 1.88 to 0.86 cases/million units sold). The odds of clinical effects was higher for exposure to pods than for traditional detergents (OR=10.8; 95% CI 9.0 to 12.9). Among patients exposed to pods, the odds of moderate/high severity outcomes was four times higher for children aged <1 years than for the other age groups (OR=3.9; 95% CI 2.2 to 7.0). Ten children exposed to laundry detergent pods had high severity outcomes while no children exposed to traditional laundry detergents developed high severity effects. Conclusions The study confirms that exposure to laundry detergent pods is more dangerous than exposure to traditional detergents. In Italy, 4 months after the introduction of opaque outer packaging by a major company, product-specific exposure rates decreased sharply, suggesting that reducing visibility of laundry detergent pods may be an effective preventive measure. Further efforts are needed to improve safety

239 Surveillance of toxic exposures to liquid laundry detergents in pods in Italy

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static and dynamic behavior of pu foams with multilayer coatings

Abstract An overview on static and dynamic behavior of functional polymeric foams is presented. In particular, a PU (Poly Urethane) open cells foam was manufactured to obtain specimens with different nanostructured coatings. An experimental campaign was performed with 7 different kind of multilayer coatings. Quasi-static compression preconditioning and compression fatigue cycles were applied and 5 parameters were measured during cycling: Hysteresis loop area, Dissipated energy per cycle, Stiffness degradation, Secant modulus, Loss factor values. The results show the effect of the contribution of nanoink layers to the static and cyclic behavior of foams

Cyclic compression behaviour of multilayered nanostructured foams: numerical meso scale modelling and experimental validation

In the present paper the mechanical fatigue behavior of a complex porous and hierarchical structure at a macroscopic scale is investigated from the experimental point of view. A numerical model describing the cyclic behavior is developed considering the geometric structure of the foam and the constitutive model, using a macro-mechanical hyperelastic material Ogden models. The coated open cell foam is characterized by Representative Volume Element of Finite Elements (FEA-RVE) model at the mesoscale with periodic boundary conditions. The RVE model is based on the microscopic foam topology and density, then a tessellation is applied to randomly generate the inner structure. The FEA model is then inserted, and the overall response is validated and calibrated from quasi-static and fatigue compression tests run at two different frequencies. The mesoscale model is used to simulate the mechanism involved in the compression of PU hierarchical composite foams, the structure buckling and the dissipated energy

Stiffness, Energy Dissipation, and Hyperelasticity in Hierarchical Multilayer Composite Nanocoated Open‐Cell Polyurethane Foams

The paper describes the manufacturing, testing and modelling of a class of open cell polyurethane foams doped with multi-walled carbon nanotubes and nano polyurethane dispersions and subjected to quasi-static cycling compressive loading at large deformations. The doped nano-ink foams are produced using a multiple steps dip coating technique that makes possible the development of nano- based porous materials by post-processing existing off-the-shelf open cell foams. Tests are carried out up to 18.5% of compressive strain to identify loading/unloading moduli and energy absorbed after 5 cycles of stabilization. Hyperelastic Ogden models also considering the Mullins effect for cyclic loading are used to identify the constitutive parameters for these foams. The results show that the use of the multi-walled carbon nanotube layers provide an effective increase of the stiffness and energy absorbed compared to pristine and nano polyurethane dispersions-treated foams. The volume average energy absorbed after the stabilization cycles is increased by 200% compared to the pristine foam when the multi-walled carbon nanotube layers are used. The parameters of the constitutive models extracted from the tests show that these nano-ink foams can be modelled following state-of-the-art hyperelastic representation