The chroming trend is one of the most dangerous trends currently spreading across social media platforms, with young people participating in viral challenges involving the inhalation of toxic chemicals. Often found in household products such as aerosol deodorant, spray paint, metallic paint, gasoline, glue, hairspray, and nail polish, these aerosolized products are being used to induce a short-lived high or self-medicate.
The child and teen experimentation rate is alarming, especially since inhalant abuse and substance use are linked to cardiac arrest and other types of heart damage, oxygen deprivation, kidney damage, muscle weakness, and even death after a single session.
Chroming can cause serious risks. While the side effects of inhaling substances have been known for decades, most kids participating in social media challenges, like chroming, are unaware that chroming can cause both severe short-term and permanent damage.
This chemical exposure causes children and teens to sustain irreparable brain damage, electrolyte disturbances, impaired judgment, and other drug abuse outcomes like worsening school performance and decreased interest in life.
Despite being easily accessible, these chemical substances—including toluene, nitrous oxide, and solvents—can prove fatal, especially when inhaled through the mouth or nose. Driven by curiosity, peer pressure, and the addictive pull of posting videos, teens are experimenting with trends that medical experts warn may cause sustained, irreparable brain damage.
If your child or loved one has been harmed by this dangerous trend, contact a Texas social media addiction lawyer at Reich & Binstock for a free consultation at 713-622-7271.
What Is “Chroming Trend”?
The term “chroming” refers to a dangerous trend that has gained popularity among young adults on social media platforms like TikTok.
The trend of chroming refers to the act of inhaling chemicals from household products, like aerosol cans, metallic paints, or deodorant sprays, to get high. This blanket term includes the misuse of household chemicals or other products.
Inhaling chemicals like:
- Hydrocarbons (found in gasoline, spray paint, paint thinners, aerosol metallic paints, glue, permanent markers, and other aerosolized products)
- Toluene (found in spray paint, paint thinners, nail polish, glue, permanent markers, and other aerosols),
- Lead (found in metallic paints)
and other chemicals can lead to hallucinations, nausea, lightheadedness, headaches, confusion, numbness, and drowsiness quickly afterwards.
The term chroming gained popularity on social media as part of a viral trend that’s led to spikes in inhalant use among teenagers and children. While kids participate in social media challenges like chroming out of curiosity or for the short-term effects of euphoria, the practice poses both short-term and long-term concerns, including asphyxiation, seizures, choking, suffocation, and chroming death.
These dangerous activities are often recorded and shared during friends’ sleepovers or in the kids’ own rooms to gain attention, despite the permanent damage burning can cause.
To learn more, contact a Texas TikTok lawsuit attorney.
Chroming Challenge on Social Media
The chroming challenge on social media has emerged as an especially dangerous trend among young users, leading to major increases in inhalant abuse associated with chemical substances. Participants inhale substances like metallic paints, solvents, nitrous oxide, and other toxic chemicals, often included in everyday products.
Dangerous trends and social media challenges, like chroming activities, present numerous dangers for kids who participate. Children and teenagers are taking serious risks and suffering side effects associated with drug use, like falling, kidney issues, heart damage, overdoses, and chronic death, in exchange for the short-term effect of feeling euphoria or being high.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse and other experts have noted a disturbing connection between the challenge of chroming and an underlying psychiatric component, often tied to untreated drug use or depression.
In recent years, this trend has become viral, even as health authorities warn of the harm caused by hydrocarbons, solvents, and adrenaline surges during use.
Young users participating in inhalant use, huffing chemicals or products like metallic paints or nitrous oxide, may display visible signs, as it mimics the effects of alcohol intoxication. Children involved in chroming may also have sores around the mouth, but the hidden neurological and psychological outcomes can be much worse, requiring prompt intervention, increased awareness, limiting social media use, and long-term treatment.
Chroming: How Do You Do It?
Chroming is done by intentionally inhaling vapors to get a fast-acting high from cheap products that kids have quick access to because they’re trashed when no longer needed for family use. Young users may spray aerosol cans into a bag or breathe directly through their mouth or nose.
This practice is alarming since a single session can prove fatal, since inhalants like hydrocarbons, toluene, lead, and other chemicals disrupt oxygen flow, leading to muscle weakness, slurred speech, headaches, fainting, seizures, overdoses, and chroming death.
The trend of chroming often occurs at sleepovers, especially among younger children who don’t understand that huffing can kill them.
What is WhipTok?
WhipTok is a subset of the TikTok chroming challenge. Children and teenagers participate by inhaling fumes from nitrous oxide, often using a plastic bag or canisters. This huffing trend, which gets its name from “whippets,” the slang term for nitrous oxide inhalation, has become alarmingly popular among young people.
Side effects, like slurred speech, lightheadedness, or drowsiness, seem harmless to teens and young adults, but the risks of long-term abuse are significant. Inhalant abuse of nitrous oxide can lead to oxygen deprivation, choking, kidney and nerve damage, and long-term health complications.
The popularity of trends, like WhipTok and chroming, highlights the negative effects of social media on young users.
Chroming vs Huffing
Both chroming and huffing involve inhaling fumes from everyday household items, but they differ slightly in practice and the types of products used.
Huffing, a longstanding practice, often includes the inhalation of fumes from household chemicals such as permanent markers, aerosol deodorants, or glue.
These products release volatile substances that can result in chemical exposure, leading to short-term intoxication and long-term health outcomes. Tragically, the effects of huffing kill, with fatalities sometimes occurring after just one use due to cardiac arrest, suffocation, or other complications.
Social media platforms like TikTok have amplified these risky behaviors, encouraging more young people to engage in these activities.
What are Paint Huffers?: Huffing Spray Paint
Paint huffers are individuals who inhale paint vapors to get high, often by breathing through a rag, bag, or directly from cans. Huffing exposes users to hydrocarbons, solvents, and other chemicals that can kill brain cells, disrupt oxygen, and result in death.
The practice has gained attention as part of the broader trend of chroming, especially among teenagers and children seeking quick, cheap highs. Despite hydrocarbons being easy to get, these products can cause hallucinations, muscle weakness, nausea, or even cardiac arrest from huffing the first time.
Inhalant Use Statistics from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
Inhalant abuse is a concerning and dangerous practice among young people. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and the 2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), approximately 2.2% of children and teens aged 12 to 17 reported using inhalants to get high in the past year. This is around 560,000 young people engaging in inhalant use per year.
Children use everyday household items for inhalant use because they’re easily accessible but result in damage to the brain, heart, lungs, kidneys, and other organs, especially with long-term abuse. The risks of inhalant abuse go beyond physical harm, as it can also lead to significant psychological and emotional challenges.
What is Chroming Death?
Chroming death is when teens or children who use inhalants, like nitrous oxide, hydrocarbons or toluene, to get high, die from the inhalants.
Notable cases include 11-year-old Tommie-Lee Gracie Billington from the UK, who suffered cardiac arrest after attempting chroming at a friend’s sleepover in March 2024. Similarly, 13-year-old Esra Haynes from Australia died in 2023.
This dangerous form of substance use has led to immediate heart attacks, fatal seizures, or suffocation. Inhaling chemicals can trigger irreversible brain damage or death in minutes. Most teens and children who have died from chroming had no history of drug use.
What is Sudden Sniffing Death Syndrome?
Another danger with chroming and similar inhalant activities is Sudden Sniffing Death Syndrome. This condition occurs when fumes from substance use of paint thinners, nail polish, etc, trigger fatal accidents.
Sudden Sniffing Death Syndrome occurs when children use household products as inhalants and die from immediate cardiac arrest. We urge parents not to underestimate the risk of their kids inhaling toxic fumes.
Other Harmful Effects Of Chroming Challenges
Chroming poses a risk of death. Inhaling toxic fumes can also lead to suffocation, cardiac arrest, and irreparable brain damage. Beyond severe short-term health issues, the long-term effects of chroming diminish children’s quality of life.
How to Know If Your Child Is Chroming
All parents with children on social media should look for signs of their child engaging in TikTok chroming challenges. Worsening school performance, decreased interest in activities, impaired judgment, frequent nosebleeds, sores around the mouth, and other drug use and inhalant abuse signs may signal the effects of chroming.
If your child is chroming, showing social media addiction symptoms, or showing signs of an internet addiction disorder, a social media dopamine detox may be a good place to start.
Can I Sue TikTok For The Chroming Social Media Challenge?
The TikTok chroming trend has harmed and killed countless young people. Medical toxicology experts point to social media companies for normalizing such challenges with addictive effects, and legal action is necessary to stop widespread children’s deaths.
Consulting an experienced Texas chroming lawyer can help determine whether legal action is appropriate in situations involving the harmful effects of trends like chroming.
Contact a Texas Chroming Lawsuit Attorney
If you or a loved one has been harmed by the dangerous TikTok chroming trend, it’s crucial to take action. At Reich & Binstock, our experienced Houston personal injury law firm knows the devastating impact that harmful social media trends can have on children and families.
We are committed to holding the responsible parties accountable and helping you seek justice for the physical, emotional, and financial hardships you’ve faced.
Contact us today at (713) 622-7271 to discuss your case and explore your legal options. Let us help you fight for the compensation and accountability you deserve.
