An alarming new trend involving teenagers eating detergent capsules and posting the videos on YouTube could “put them in danger”, health officials have warned.

The concerning 'Tide Pod Challenge' phenomenon has spread across social media since the turn of the year.

Teenagers have filmed themselves biting into Tide laundry detergent capsules, with some of the videos racking up more than 100,000 hits before being removed by YouTube.

The first mention of the 'Tide Pod Challenge' on YouTube dates back to June 2014, while parody website The Onion followed this up with a satirical op-ed about the pods in 2015.

A video by CollegeHumor titled ‘Don't Eat the Laundry Pods’ posted in March 2017 has been viewed more than three million times and towards the end of last year it spread into a popular meme.