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The most common and seemingly innocuous of household products may have the potential to cause serious illness (or even death) under certain circumstances, and even products we know should be treated with caution (especially around children) may pose completely unanticipated dangers. One sample warning circulated online invokes both of these factors in telling the tale of a small child who supposedly died from suffocation after inhaling baby oil he had smeared on himself: In the 1991 case of Ayers v. Johnson & Johnson, a Washington couple brought a product liability action against Johnson & Johnson, claiming that their 15-month-old child had suffered irreversible brain damage after inhaling baby oil produced by that company, a danger not sufficiently covered on the product's warning label: Moreover, the Ayers testified that they had always been careful to keep potentially dangerous products out of reach of their infants, but they had no idea that baby oil could pose so serious a danger (particularly in the manner it ultimately did) to a child: In this particular case, David Ayers aspirated a harmful amount of baby oil not through the act of merely spreading it on his head and face, but because he was startled in the act of ingesting it, causing him to gasp and inhale the oil into his lungs. A very unusual circumstance, perhaps, but no less tragic for its exceptionality. In May 2001, a similar incident resulted in the death of 16-month-old Jaiden Bryson in California: Jaiden's death led the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to require child-resistant packaging for some common household products and cosmetics containing hydrocarbons that can poison children, including baby oil.
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