A mum has warned parents to check for child-proof locks when buying cleaning products after her daughter unscrewed the lid of a highly-corrosive product and ended up in hospital.
Emily Lockwood says 21-month-old Esmae-Cora has been left with painful sores after splashing oven cleaner on herself at their home in Lancashire.
Emily, 21, attempted to wash the substance off Esmae-Cora in the shower before rushing to hospital.
The pair spent six hours under a cold shower at Airedale Hospital before being transferred to a specialist burns unit in Wakefield.
Esmae-Cora was then treated with ointment, Lancs Live reports, with hospital staff warning that the cleaning product was so corrosive it would keep “eating into her skin” if left untreated.
They were told she would have to return three times a week for treatment for the next six weeks, avoid baths for six months and avoid direct sunlight for the next year and a half.
Now her desperate mum is warning others to always check dangerous products come with a safety lid - and to avoid them at all costs if not.
Emily said on the morning of Wednesday, May 18, she was upstairs changing her nine-month-old son, Louie-George, when she heard a scream from downstairs and rushed to see what the matter was.
She said: “I heard a scream so I ran downstairs, and then I just heard her crying. I looked, and her leg was raw, so I took her pants off and put her in the shower.
“When we came downstairs, I saw the product was all over the floor in the kitchen.
"She’d picked it up by the lid, which has no child lock and she’s tipped it all over the floor and slipped in it.
“She had pyjamas on, and it back splashed onto the front of her leg.”
Upon reaching hospital, staff told her that the product was so harsh that it would continue to corrode Esmae-Cora’s skin, meaning their ordeal was far from over.
Emily said: “The staff said a normal PH level was seven, and hers was 10, and they said that it was so high that it was still corroding.
“They said if you don’t draw it out, you will start to see her bone; it will basically eat and eat and eat away at everything until it hits the bone.
"If I hadn’t immediately stripped her off and put her in the shower, it could have been much worse.
“They said what I’d done immediately was fantastic, but anybody else might not have known what to do.
“It’s my little girl. We’ve all done it before - we’ve all gone and bought these cheap cleaning products because they’re cheap but I have learned my lesson and I will never buy a cleaning product without a safety cap on again.”
She says the family have now changed the child safety locks on the kitchen door where the product was stored.
She added: “I have that guilt every day; I know that I could have done more and I have changed the locks on my cupboard doors and put a lock on top of the kitchen door, but it needs dealing with."
