Six pediatricians swallowed a Lego figure head to see how long it took to be expelled from the human body.
There are scientists willing to do anything in the name of science. Just look at the example of the American doctor Joseph Goldberger, who, in order to prove his theory, forced himself to eat a pill with the urine, skin and feces of patients infected with pellagra.
In this spirit, six pediatricians carried out an experiment, to say the least, bizarre: swallowed a head of the iconic Lego figure to determine how long it takes, on average, to be expelled from the body.
Often, when children play with Lego, parents are afraid that their child might swallow one of the building blocks. In cases where this actually happens, many go immediately to the hospital emergency room.
However, Dr. Andy Tagg of Western Health in Melbourne, Australia, warns that no need for alarm.
Tagg was one of the doctors who swallowed a Lego. The results of his experiment show that, on average, the excretion time of the small object is 1.71 days. The results were published in the scientific journal Journal of Pediatrics and Child Health.
“A toy passes quickly through adult subjects without complications. This will reassure parents, and the authors argue that no parent should look in their child’s stool to prove object retrieval.”
Andy Tagg and company warn, however, of some types of objects that are, in fact, dangerous for children if swallowed. One of them are the “button batteries”, the small, round, wafer-shaped batteries often found in electronic toys.
These batteries can even burn an esophagus in a few hours, so they are far more dangerous than a coin or a Lego head.
ZAP // 
