This DIY Halloween basket can put your child in danger

Remember those really basic Halloween baskets that would hold all your candy as you went from door to door while trick-or-treating?

They were pumpkin orange and as basic as your standard jack-o-lantern with two triangle-shaped eyes and a smile with missing teeth painted on the basket.

Now, in the era of do-it-yourself costumes, treats and baskets, people are attempting to create their own. It seems easy enough when you can use one of those orange Tide Pods containers, some black paint and a piece of string to turn this laundry detergent container into a candy collector.

Resist the temptation. This easy do-it-yourself project can turn dangerous, quick.

“Detergent residue can linger, so you don’t want to reuse packaging from these products, especially for food or beverage storage,” Doris Sullivan, associate director of product safety at Consumer Reports, said.

Oddly enough, Tide, made by Procter & Gamble, designed these containers with the bright-orange color to discourage children from thinking the pods were candy.

“The reason the Tide containers are opaque plastic instead of clear is to make the detergent pods less visible to children and reduce the temptation to reach for them,” Consumer Reports stated.

So far this year, poison-control centers across the nation have received reports of 8,665 children age 5 and younger who were exposed to the detergent in liquid laundry pods and pacs, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers. This includes ingesting, inhaling, absorbing the contents through skin or getting it in their eyes.

This story was originally published October 30, 2017 at 1:37 PM with the headline "This DIY Halloween basket can put your child in danger."