RALEIGH, NC – A day care worker was arrested Wednesday night and accused of leaving a 1-year-old in bleach.

Shannon Rae Duncan Carter, 27, of 4220 Hunnicutt Drive was charged by Raleigh police with a misdemeanor count of child abuse.

Carter was working at the Beacon Christian School at 3933 New Bern Ave. on April 20 when she was changing a 1-year-old girl, said Jim Sughrue, spokesman for the Raleigh Police Department.

The changing table had a bleach mixture on it, and the infant’s clothes became damp with the bleach, Sughrue said.

Police think Carter left the clothes on the child. The baby’s parents noticed that the color had seeped out of the clothes and the bleach caused a minor irritation on the baby’s arm. Carter declined to comment when reached Thursday evening.

Source: Story obtained from North Carolina Licensed Child Care Association web site on April 16, 2008

Why Did We Post This?

This tragic event should NEVER have happened. If workers at that facililty had followed the guidelines set forth by the North Carolina. . .

“As of January 1, 2006, all daycare centers in the State of North Carolina must have the ability to test the chlorine content in both their sanitizing and disinfecting solutions. Previously the law stated that they had to test only the chlorine concentration in their sanitizing solutions.” — simplyfrogg.com/water-quality

That child would not have gotten injured in the way it did if the workers had properly monitored chlorine levels in their cleaning solution(s) with a simple, inexpensive and easy-to-use test like the Chlorine Check Ultra High II test strip.

Approved by the NCLCCA for use in child care facilities in North Carolina, the Chlorine Check Ultra High II test strip quickly and accurately tells users the amount of chlorine in parts per million (ppm) their cleaning solutions contain in just over 1 minute.

Aside from helping to protect children and child care workers from accidental exposure to dangerous levels of chlorine in wash/cleaning solutions, the Chlorine Check Ultra High II test strip makes things more convenient by having the ability to check chlorine concentrations in both sanitizing AND disinfecting solutions.