'It was frightening': Wellington woman blinded by household cleaner

Dirty outside wall ... no problem - Sally Selwood had just the cleaner for it.

She washed, she rinsed and then her vision became fuzzy. By the time she had showered she was blind.

Thinking she was having a stroke or a brain aneurysm, Selwood thought fast and managed to get her Apple watch to find her phone.

Then she scrambled to where the phone was beeping, and used voice commands to ring her neighbour.

Selwood's neighbour looked like a featureless blob - no face, legs, nothing.

"It was frightening," she told Stuff this week.

The neighbour then drove Selwood to her optometrist, who quickly diagnosed she had severe blistering on the front of her eyes.

"He asked what I had been doing," so she told him she had been cleaning a wall on her home.

The optometrist said the blistering was a chemical injury caused by the cleaner Selwood had been using - Double Bubble Wet & Forget and told her she was legally blind.

Stuff has seen his report.

What followed, last November, was two days of blindness, and another three days before Selwood's eyesight returned to normal.

At the time the 71-year-old had to have her eyes extensively sluiced and she had visited Wellington Hospital on several occasions.

She believed her eyes had come into contact with the chemical when she was rinsing the wall, but was surprised it made contact, because she was wearing prescription glasses.

"I never got the spray directly on my face," she told Stuff.

Although instructions on the product's label advised customers to avoid contact with eyes, Selwood believed they needed to be stronger, and should warn people to wear proper eye protection.

Last Thursday Wet & Forget's website stated Double Bubble was "no more dangerous than ordinary detergent" - but, by Monday, the line had been removed, after Stuff contacted the company.

Selwood emailed Wet & Forget to express concern about the product's labelling last November, and said she received a phone call from the general manager, who apologised.

"He said I was the only person ever to have such a problem and the labelling was perfectly satisfactory."

Health NZ - Te Whatu Ora Capital, Coast, Hutt Valley & Wairarapa principal media adviser Chas Te Runa said the eye clinic at Wellington Hospital "regularly" saw injuries caused by alkaline, which could be found in a range of products such as mould and oven cleaners.

"The clinic recommends that these products carry a warning about the risk of eye injury."

Te Runa said the agency had not collected data on specific products or brands that had caused eye injuries.

National Poisons Centre (NPC) deputy director William Boroughf said since the product's launch in 2019 the centre had received 14 calls about exposure to Wet & Forget Double Bubble.

Of those, 12 related to eye exposure, ranging from drops and splashes to mist blowing into the eye. Boroughf said all callers complained of eye pain and redness with some saying symptoms lasted longer than 24 hours, including blurry vision.

The 14 calls represented a "tiny fraction" of the 134,000 calls the NPC had received since 2019, he said.

"However, the theme is consistent with respect to incidental eye exposures resulting in significant symptoms. As a general rule, the NPC recommends medical evaluation for eye exposure to any potentially caustic product, but we do not have the capacity to follow these calls and to track their outcomes."

Calls to the centre were voluntary, so the database likely under-represented the number of exposures to the product, he said.

In a statement last Friday on behalf of Wet & Forget, managing partner of PR Partners, Jon Ramage said the company was "very sorry" to hear about Selwood's injury.

It was the first time it had received a report of eye damage, from the use of "any" of its products in 20 years, Ramage said.

Wet & Forget was nearing the end of a complete change of all of its labelling, which would include a "voluntary graphic device" that showed recommended safety wear, including gloves and goggles, for the products that required it - including Double Bubble, he said.

"[Wet & Forget] will update the Q&A section on the website for Double Bubble and other products to remove the "It is no more dangerous than ordinary detergent" statement. [It] will also reiterate to the [Wet & Forget] 21 store network the importance of sharing the safety instructions with people purchasing the product."

Both Selwood and her cousin were thrilled to hear the product's label would soon suggest customers use gloves and goggles.

"I'm delighted," Selwood said. "It's a good product but you need to be careful around it."

- This story was first published by Stuff.