An emergency medicine professor has sounded the alarm concerning a rising social media trend called chroming. It’s a fresh term for a familiar practice among teens, and it comes with serious health risks.
According to Dr. Anthony Pizon, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center chief of medical toxicology, “chroming” is the new version of “huffing.” From permanent markers to paint thinners, the fumes of household items are inhaled to “high.” And TikTok has made it more popular.
“That describes kids huffing any available hydrocarbon they can get their hands on,” Pizon told CBS News.
“Children are getting a high. And the symptoms typically are what you would see with, say, alcohol intoxication. The children are inebriated, staggered gait, sedation,” he continued.
The toxicology expert pointed out it’s not “super common” for chroming to lead to an uptick in hospital admissions, but the substance abuse trend is seen with children and adults alike on a “regular basis.”
“Sometimes people will take this to extremes and put the compound in a bag and put their bag over their head, and they can obviously suffocate to death,” he said. “Some of the compounds that they inhale can cause cardiac arrest, which would be most severe. And then there’s lots of other side effects that you can see from this. You can see kidney damage, electrolyte disturbances, seizures, lung injury, muscle weakness.”
TikTok leads users who search “chroming” to the service’s safety center, where they can learn more about substance abuse.
But that doesn’t stop people from trying it.
“You just have to be that interested what your children are doing, and aware of what they may have access to in their room,” Pizon said. “Noticing these drained compounds may be under their bed.”
He recommends parents dispose of any products — of which there are many — when they’re no longer needed.
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