A woman remained in critical condition Thursday after drinking sweet tea that contained a toxic industrial cleaning chemical — which was apparently mistaken by an employee for sugar — at a South Jordan restaurant.
Now I’m against mandatory “Safe Storage” laws, because I’m not a one-size fits all sort of guy. For some mandated safe storage laws are overkill and pose a greater risk than any benefits. Others the minimum safe storage laws might not provide enough safety.
Now let’s look at this story. From all evidence presented it doesn’t sound like this was an intentional sabotage of the tea, but a mistake of two very similar looking products.
Still in my house I have lots of products that look VERY different, while being very different products. Say like my daughter’s baby wipes, her booger wipes, and our countertop cleaning rags. All come in plastic boxes, all are moist paper towels, but say wiping my daughter’s butt or nose with a disinfectant cleaner would be REALLY bad. Now despite the similarities, the containers are marked differently, and we keep them in different places. The baby stuff is near the changing pad with the diapers and such, and the cleaning products are locked up in a cabinet where little hands can’t find them.
So that begs the question, why was a lye-based cleaner stored both in packaging, and location that would lead them to be easily confused? I don’t store cleaning chemicals in unmarked packaging. I do store sugar and other baking supplies in secondary containers, but those items are stored in one cabinet with edible supplies, while the toxic stuff is stored with the cleaning supplies.
Now it appears from a little extra research that no criminal charges are going to be filed, but the restaurant will likely be paying civil penalties for the damages they caused to this poor woman, and depending on how that goes, there could be termination of employment for any persons found at fault by the company.
This shows the stupidity of the gun-centric “Safe Storage” laws. This is a redundant law. If I stored cleaning rags in a similar container and location to my baby products I would be at fault for any damages caused by a mistake. If I allowed my daughter do access the cleaning chemicals (or the stairs, or the outside, etc) I could face criminal charges. A baby drinking cleaning fluid or eating a detergent pod is MORE dangerous than them playing with a loaded gun, so it seems rather foolish to just focus on guns when so many things are dangerous, and the law looks at danger, not at the particular item.
But of course those who use “Gun Death” as a metric aren’t REALLY concerned with public safety, all they want is to ban guns and harass lawful gun owners.
H/T Wallphone
