what myself and a group of colleagues decided to do was swallow some lego
heads just a bit like this to see how long they would take to go through our
system and how long they take to come out in our poo
lots of children present to
emergency departments having swallowed things that their parents are worried
about one of those things happens to be kind of pieces of Lego but it can be any
small material
so a little plastic Lego head there like this something the size
of a sweet corn if you manage to swallow that and you don't cough and you don't
choke and you don't have any ongoing symptomology it's very unlikely to do
you any harm at all at all and the body's very good at passing that there
are some objects which parents should get concerned about there's increased
awareness of the problems that button batteries cause so button batteries are
those silver coin shaped objects that you often get in electronic devices now
they can cause real problems because they can burn through the lining of this
stomach or the tube from the mouth into the stomach and I think if a parent
suspects that their child has swallowed a battery or a button battery that is a
cause to need to go and seek medical attention as soon as possible
took on average of one point seven days for the lego head to pass out in a
participants poo the only person out of the six to not pass their Lego head was
poor old me I think that was because I just didn't look properly in the first
couple of motions that I did and then got more desperate as time went on to
try and find it sadly I think I probably did miss it rather than it being still
inside my body
I can assure you that this was not one of the Lego heads used in the experiment
otherwise I wouldn't be holding it without gloves on