A teenage girl who turned to inhaling aerosols while battling anxiety was found dead on her bedroom floor after a suspected heart attack.
Assistant school principal Anne Ryan found her 16-year-old daughter Brooke dead in their home in Broken Hill, in far western NSW, on February 3.
She had been been sniffing aerosols, which is also known as ‘chroming’, ‘huffing’ or inhalant abuse.
Her grieving mum has spoken out on Mother’s Day about the ‘nightmare’ she endured since finding her daughter’s body.
Ms Ryan had no idea her daughter was abusing inhalants, and warned parents about what to watch out for.
‘I wake up, I think of her, I go to sleep and think of her… Every day is a nightmare,’ she told the Sydney Morning Herald.
Warning signs include someone suddenly having a lot of headaches, using more deodorant or other aerosols than usual, and white patches on tea towels or hand towels.
Ms Ryan wants more education about the risk of inhalants aimed at both parents and young people in schools.
She also called for better labelling on aerosol cans to warn of the risks.
Chroming has become such a danger to teenagers in recent years that in the outback Queensland town of Mt Isa, Coles, Kmart, and Woolworths locked up their aerosols last year.
Youth workers pleaded with shops to move the products from shelves into locked cabinets as so many children were inhaling the toxic chemicals.
Children as young as seven were becoming addicted to the high they got from fumes of deodorant cans, paint tins, peroxides, and hair dyes.
As well as her mum, Brooke left behind her dad Deon, three older brothers, her boyfriend, and a great many friends.
She was a beautiful girl with a heart of gold, who’s just so sorely missed, and would be absolutely devastated to know the negative impact she’s had on so many people from her death,’ Ms Ryan said.
Her mother said Brooke struggled with anxiety, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, like many teenagers.
But she had a lot of support and was determined to get through it. She played basketball, netball and soccer and was so good at AFL she was scouted by GWS Giants.
AFL Broken Hill mourned Brooke on Facebook, saying she ‘was a talented and popular member of the North Football Club and GWS academy squad’.
Brooke, who was just a week away from starting Year 11 when she died, wanted to be a lawyer, physiotherapist, or beautician.