Woman dies after inhaling cleaning product she used to unclog her sink

25th of May 2023
Woman dies after inhaling cleaning product she used to unclog her sink

A woman from north-west Spain has died from severe respiratory failure after cleaning her sink.

Angela Gil from Gijon was attempting to unclog her kitchen basin using a household drain cleaner. But when she poured the product into the sink, it apparently caused a chemical reaction that proved to be deadly. Investigators later made this assumption "according to how black the sink was".

Gil rushed out of her apartment and tried seeking help from her neighbours, all of whom were out. On returning home, a neighbour found Gil collapsed near a lift and alerted the emergency services while also attempting to perform life-saving measures.

Paramedics rushed the woman to a nearby hospital where she was shortly pronounced dead. A post mortem later confirmed she had died from inhaling a lethal amount of the substance.

The cleaning product involved is apparently sold on the shelves of Spanish convenience stores alongside detergents, fabric softeners and other cleaning products.

The family of 47-year-old Gil are now considering legal action against the product's manufacturers in a bid to prevent anyone else from suffering the same fate.

Incidents such as this are rare but are not unheard of. In August 2020, 34-year-old Leah Seymour from London died after inhaling fumes from bleach mixed with other cleaning products while scrubbing her bathroom.

And in July 2018, a 30-year-old woman from Madrid suffered a fatal cardiac arrest after cleaning her kitchen using an ammonia compound.

 

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