The cause of Harris Wolobah's death last Friday hasn't been determined and an autopsy was still pending as of Thursday, but the 14-year-old's family blames the challenge. Since his death, the Texas-based manufacturer, Paqui, has asked retailers to stop selling the individually wrapped chips -- a step 7-Eleven has already taken.
Authorities in Massachusetts have also responded to the death by warning parents about the challenge, which is is popular on social media sites such as TikTok. Scores of people, including children, post videos of themselves unwrapping the packaging, eating the spicy chips and then reacting to the heat. Some videos show people gagging, coughing and begging for water.
"You can have very mild symptoms like burning or tingling of the lips in the mouth, but you can also have more severe symptoms," said Dr. Lauren Rice, the chief of pediatric emergency medicine at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, noting that this is an opportunity for parents, coaches, teachers to learn about the various social media challenges that are out there and could pose dangers.
"It's possible eating these chips with high concentration of capsaicin could cause death," he said. "It would really depend on the amount of capsaicin that an individual was exposed to. At high doses, it can lead to fatal dysrhythmia or irreversible injury to the heart."
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