Huggies Wipes Scraping Babies’ Skin And Moms Want Recall — Company Says Product Is Safe

Parents aren’t happy with Huggies. After a Florida mom posted a video online of their wipes, shining with some mysterious, abrasive substance that looks like glass shards, the company has declared their product safe and refused to conduct a recall.

And that’s all some frustrated parents want. Others are hoarding their wipes as evidence in case a lawsuit is brought against Huggies. New mother Kelsea Andrews has simply stopped using them altogether and insists all she wants is a swift recall, she told USA Today.

She has a 4-month-old named Elise. Her new baby’s usually happy disposition changed recently, and Andrews checked everything she could think of to figure out why — “her formula, her soap, if her diaper is too tight, fever, gas, and so on.”

According to Kelsea, none of these were to blame. With a little detective work, she determined that it was the wipes that had made her baby so miserable.

“I noticed that when I was wiping her with these, she would look red and kind of irritated. These shiny specks, they come off on your hands. It’s a prickly sensation and it feels like it’s digging into your skin. I have been wiping my daughter down with this, her body, her face and her eyes. I cannot imagine how she has been feeling.”

The new mom has done some research into the ingredients and wonders if the mysterious shiny specks — which Huggies has insisted could not be glass — are polypropylene plastic. Huggies uses the microfiber to give them “softness and strength.”

Whether or not the wipes were the culprit of Elise’s discontent is up for speculation. All her mom knows is, once she stopped using them, she was happy again.

The accusing video was posted online last week by another mom, Kimberly Miner of Palm Coast, Florida. She thought the shiny specks looked like glue, but her husband was skeptical. That was until he used the wipes on his arm. Though he felt nothing unusual at fist, “10 minutes later I really started noticing that it was starting to itch on my arm.”

According to First Coast News, the Miners are packing up their wipes and sending them back to Huggies.

Meanwhile, the company has refused demands for a recall and conducted an analysis of their wipes by an independent firm. Not only is glass not used in the manufacturing process, the tests confirmed that none was in fact present, and that the only substance found was microfibers. They also explained the shimmer as “microfibers reflecting light.”

According to the Consumerist, Huggies has also admitted that on “extremely rare occasions,” the manufacturing process can cause “tiny particles of microfiber to form on the wipe that can be felt, but do not present a safety risk.”

That’s not good enough for Andrews; in her opinion, Huggies hasn’t looked deep enough into the mystery. She said she doesn’t want to sue or free coupons — she wants a recall, plain and simple.

“How can the company come forward and say, ‘Hey moms, it’s still OK to use our product’ when they’re not even for sure what’s in it in the first place?”

So far, there’s no indication that the company will issue a recall in the near future.

[Photo Courtesy Andrew Zarivny/Shutterstock]