Dragon's Breath Snack Unsafe? Eating Liquid Nitrogen-Infused Treat Sends Boy To Hospital

Dragon's Breath, a cereal-like treat, recently sent a boy to the hospital and his mother is now warning others about the dangers of the liquid nitrogen-infused treat. Racheal McKenny, of St. Augustine, Florida, said she bought her son the Dragon’s Breath snack from the Avenues Mall in nearby Jacksonville last week.

The treat is coated in liquid nitrogen, which allows people who eat it to look as if they're blowing out smoke like a dragon, giving the snack its name.

“They had fun and it seemed harmless enough,” McKenny wrote in a Facebook post that went viral, having been shared over 80,000 times.

However, it all turned into a nightmare as her son, who has very mild asthma, started having trouble breathing on the way home from the mall, shortly after eating the snack.

“Around 20 minutes in, the cough became really consistent. By the time we passed the Palencia subdivision, he was coughing so bad that he was having trouble catching his breath,” she said on Facebook. “We knew he couldn’t breathe, and we knew that we couldn’t get him to the hospital in time.”

McKenny’s husband, John, knew of a nearby fire station and they stopped at the site where paramedics started Johnny on an albuterol treatment and IV before transporting him to a local hospital.

“The nebulizer was not improving his breathing at all and, by the time they got him loaded into the ambulance, he needed a shot of epinephrine. Johnny had a second breathing treatment and steroid on the way to the hospital and was doing so much better by the time we got to Flagler Hospital [in St. Augustine],” she continued.

McKenny said her son was back home and doing well, but she wanted other parents to be careful about the treat, especially if their children have asthma.

Following the incident, the kiosk where McKenny purchased the snack posted an allergy and asthma warning, she told Fox News on Tuesday.

"The kiosk owners were great about texting me ingredient information right away and they promptly updated their signs to warn future customers," she said.

According to ABC's WFTV9, Dr. Sunil Joshi of Family Allergy Asthma Consultants in Jacksonville said even people who don’t have asthma could have side effects from the nitrogen in the treat.

“Even if you don’t have asthma it can be very, very inflammatory or irritating to the airway and your esophagus and your stomach, all of that,” he said.

This is not the only accident that was caused due to consumption of a liquid nitrogen treat. In October, a 14-year-old girl was hospitalized after she was burned by the dessert sold by a different vendor. A county in New York has also moved to ban the treats.

“I should have known better, but it did not occur to me that this food could have this effect,” McKenny wrote, adding that she plans to carry her son’s emergency inhaler with her from now on.

“My son could have died,” McKenny said. “Please don’t make the same mistake I did.”