SOME parents swear by them but one shocked mum wants to warn others about the dangers of popular amber teething necklaces after her daughter’s near strangulation.

As soon as she opened her 15-month-old toddler’s door on February 17, Ashleigh Ferguson felt her blood run cold.

Her daughter Ellie, who usually jumps up from her afternoon naps as soon as the door opens, was face down and quiet.

Rushing to her cot, the Wodonga mum turned Ellie over and saw her daughter had managed to get her arm up under the amber teething necklace, twisting it into a figure eight between her arm and neck and tightening the necklace into a potential death trap.

The deep imprints left on Ellie’s arm and little neck show just how serious the incident was.

“It was wrapped around her arm and neck with a twist in between and my stomach just dropped with a sickening feeling that something like this could even happen,” Ms Ferguson, 26, said.

“But if the pressure on her neck had been in a slightly different point, it’s unimaginable.”

media_camera Ashleigh found her daughter Ellie with the amber teething necklace (above) around her neck (mark on her skin pictured above) and arm.

It was a near miss she felt needed to be shared among her friends and mother’s group on Facebook, many of whom also used the necklaces on their babies.

Within days the post went viral with 60,000 shares in a week.

Amber teething necklaces are sold in chemists and health food shops and claim to offer teething relief despite no scientific evidence to back up the claim.

They are extremely popular with young parents despite most of the necklaces carrying a warning not to let children sleep with the necklaces on.

Ms Ferguson said just about all parents ignored the warnings, assuming they were safe.

“Mum’s think they are safe, yes there are warning on them not to use on a sleeping child but most mums think it will break (before strangling) and I know many mums are using them 24/7,” she said.

“People have had a wake-up call. I think they work but they don’t have a place on a sleeping child,” Ms Ferguson said.

I think it is common sense, you don’t put anything around a baby’s neck but I think a lot of parents believe if it is available in a shop it must be safe

- SIDS and Kids community educator Lorraine Harrison

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Product Safety Australia issued a warning on the necklaces in 2011, but their popularity has soared since.

“The necklace can pose two potential hazards; from strangulation and choking,” the warning states.

SIDS and Kids community educator Lorraine Harrison said parents should always supervise their babies when wearing the necklaces and to remove them when unattended or sleeping.

“I think it is common sense, you don’t put anything around a baby’s neck but I think a lot of parents believe if it is available in a shop it must be safe,” Ms Harrison said.

Consultant paediatrician Dr Patricia McVeigh is also concerned about the potential for harm.

“They are extremely popular but there have been incidents of children aspirating them and you only need one to be breathed in and if it goes to the chest it will have to be surgically removed under general anaesthetic and the other risk is strangulation,” Dr McVeigh said.

“There is something around the child’s neck and there have been many incidents of children strangled by other things around their neck.”

Pain medicine expert from Sydney University, Professor Phillip Siddal, said there was not one scientific paper that supported the claim that the active ingredient — succinic acid — had any pain relieving properties.

“I think I can safely say any claims about pain relief are groundless. Apart from the fact of how much succinic acid actually gets absorbed, there’s not one research study. I think that says it all,” he said.

Professor Allan Blackman, a chemistry professor at the University of Auckland, recently assessed the necklaces and concluded they were useless.

“Amber does contain succinic acid but it is not very volatile so you would have to heat it to at least 200C to get it out of the amber and into your baby’s blood stream which is not going to happen when baby’s temperature is 36.9C. In layman’s terms it’s extraordinarily unlikely – it’s snake oil,” he said.