The parents of a 13-year-old Australian girl want to warn others after their daughter died. She died after inhaling dangerous chemicals from a deodorant can. They tell the Australian news site A current affair.
Esra Haynes attended Lilydale High School in Melbourne, Australia. She suffered a cardiac arrest and a brain injury after participating in a popular trend called “chroming” while staying overnight at a friend’s house on March 31, 2023.
Chroming is to inhale aerosol cans, which we know best as spray deodorant, in order to experience intoxication, writes Wikipedia.
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Parents’ shock
Esra Haynes’ parents, Paul and Andrea Haynes, could not believe what they heard when they were told the cause of death.
– She always used to be with her friends. We knew where she was and who she was with. It was an ordinary evening, the parents say about when they got the shocking news.
– Getting a phone call like that in the middle of the night… it’s the call no parent wants to receive, and unfortunately we got that call. “Come and get your daughter now”, we were told, say the parents.
When the parents arrived at the friend their daughter was staying with, paramedics were on the scene working to revive Esra.
They told Andrea the teenager had “chromet” – a dangerous growing trend, especially among teenagers, where chemicals in aerosol cans are inhaled to experience a high.
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Last goodbye
The effect in Ezra’s case proved fatal. When she arrived at the hospital, she was placed in an artificial coma, but eight days later the doctors confirmed that she had suffered severe brain damage. She could not be saved from the condition she was in.
The family decided to turn off the ventilator to let her die.
– They asked us to bring our family and friends to say goodbye to our 13-year-old daughter, says Paul to A Current Affair.
Esra’s parents and older siblings Imogen, Seth and Charlie were with the family’s youngest until the end.
The 13-year-old Australian teenager is not the first to have lost his life from “chroming”. Dagbladet has previously written about British Giorgia Green (14), who also lost her life after inhaling the chemicals from a spray deodorant.
A number of grocery stores across Australia have now begun locking up their deodorant stock following an increase in theft of the aerosol deodorants.
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In the aftermath of Esra’s death, the authorities have sent professionals who have informed school children about the dangers of chroming. Paul and Andrea believe it is not enough, and ask that more be done to prevent another family from ending up in the same situation as them.
They want aerosol manufacturers to change the deodorant formula to make them safer. At the same time, they want life-saving first aid to be taught in all schools across Australia.
– For me, that deodorant is a gun on the shelf. We need the manufacturers to step up and really change the chemicals they use in the spray cans, says Paul.
He also believes that social media should become more restrictive on the content that is posted, as it was there that Esra learned about chroming.
– We have to talk about it, says Paul, about how they manage to work so much in the middle of a grieving process.
