Inhaling correction fluid can kill you

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Updated: February 20, 2012 8:23AM

Dr. Wallace: My best friend and her boyfriend have found a new way to get high. They inhale typewriter correction fluid. They say it gives a great high, is not habit-forming and is relatively safe. I know that you will encourage me not to get high on this fluid. That’s not what I’m looking for. All I want to know is if it’s relatively safe.

Nameless, Baltimore

Nameless: Your information will be found in the following letter to me from a Kingman, Ariz., police officer. He wrote to me several years ago after working on a case involving three teens who sniffed correction fluid. Dr. Wallace:

I am a police officer working exclusively with students ranging from preschool through high school. Recently, I was witness to a tragic incident involving a young lady and the practice, so-called, of “whiting out” (sniffing typewriter correction fluid). Our agency was requested to check out three kids acting strangely in the rear of a local shopping center. I was the responding officer and found two girls and a boy about 15 years of age. Their nostrils and upper lips were covered with correction fluid and all of them had reached their “high.”

One girl, who appeared to be the promoter of the incident, (I will refer to her as Jane Doe) laughed repeatedly and kept assuring her friends that the police could do nothing, but I arrested each of them for the use of the inhalant. Less than a week later, I responded to a medical emergency call at a local youth spot. When I arrived, Jane Doe lay on the floor of the girls’ restroom — dead. In her hand, she still held the plastic bag that she had used to inhale her last breath containing the fumes of correction fluid. Jane Doe died of respiratory failure.

Allan Mullen, Kingman, Ariz., Police Department

Write to Dr. Wallace
at rwallace@galesburg.net