It's one of the joys of parenting to see your young baby start to drink by themselves. Watching them grip their own personal little cup with their tiny hands, you can finally start to see them becoming children. Yet even in this ordinary progression lurks a hidden danger that many toddlers have been exposed to. Lots of cups on the market have certain design flaws, and their limited uses are not properly understood by their customers. And thus, one suspicious father has recently made the startling and shocking discovery of what nasty mold was encased in his child's drinking cup.
What follows is cautionary tale, illustrating the dangers to be found when trusting in products to be perfectly healthy for your little children.
Pictured above is a sealed, leak-proof drinking spout, similar to many such spouts on the market for young children's sippy cups. The one in question is designed by Tommee Tippee France, manufacturers of cutesy cups. Concerned by his son's sickness, one father noticed that his son's cup had a strange smell emanating from it. Piercing it open with a knife, this is what he found lurking inside.
His son had been drinking from this mold infested container for weeks. It's no small wonder he was getting ill all the time. The father's friend, Penny Powell, posted several disgusting photos of the offending items onto her Facebook account, in order to share his discovery with other families, just in case theirs was not an isolated incident.
Perhaps alerted by the photos, or perhaps remembering a similar experience, dozens of families posted similar pictures of dirty spouts they had discovered their children drinking through in response. Most of them were from the Tommee Tippee branded cups. This company was forced to deal with these embarrassing complaints, head on. They conceded that there was a fault with their lack of clarity in informing customers just which types of drinks the cups were and were not suitable for.
Tommee tippee advise that with theirs and similar products on the market, customers should use recommended drinks only, such as cold, light fluids like water and non-pulp juices. Customers are warned however, not to use the cup for consuming thick formula milk, pulpy juice or warm drinks. Furthermore the cup ought to cleaned thoroughly after use, without waiting long to do so.
Now, we should be careful not to assume that only one particular brand is to blame here. Many cups can become breeding grounds for horrid mold if not cleaned properly, and if used to contain unrecommended drinks that are particularly susceptible to the problem. A cursory glance on the internet reveals many similar nasty stories. Witness the image below.
To avoid this problem, if you have any such cups in regular use in your household, always clean the cup quickly after use, using boiling hot water, before allowing it to dry out thoroughly. Likewise, when cleaning, search every nook and cranny for potential dark spots that could be become lively but poisonous mold colonies.
