TIL: The DO NOT EAT warnings on silica gel are about choking rather than poison
TIL: The DO NOT EAT warnings on silica gel are about choking rather than poison
I always assumed since it was a desiccant it might dry up my insides and kill me, but it seems like that’s not the case.
Relevant:
On a side note the ChubbyEmu video mentioned a man did just this out of government conspiracy or something like that
I think the chubbyemu video had the best summary where it simply says do not eat instead of something like contacting poison control or a more serious warning.
Another amusing thing is the old Jeff foxworthy line: you know why it says Do Not Eat? Because someone ate it. Imagine buying a camcorder, seeing a little pouch of marbles and thinking 'im gonna eat this'
NGL, I have almost eaten a lot of desicant packets because they have them in a lot of beef jerky packages. Jerky is one of my favorite road trip snacks, so I'll be blindly grabbing jerky out of the bag either while driving, or possibly in a dark passenger seat because I tend to do a lot of driving at night or early morning to avoid traffic, so I'm blindly shoveling dehydrated meat into my mouth, and soonermor later that little packet tends to find its way to my mouth.
I mean, it can also dry up your insides, kinda.
I had a patient once who had a med that is dispensed as these giant tablets with one of those plastic cylinder style silica desiccant thingies in the bottle. One day he swallowed the cylinder instead of a tablet and didn't even realize it. Ended up in the ED a few days later with a badly bleeding stomach ulcer from where the silica cylinder had adhered itself to the side of his stomach because it was desiccating the mucous membrane there.
So choking isn't the only hazard. Probably just more common.
Dear Diary: Jackpot.
Makes sense since silica swells with moisture
Here's a fun one: silica gel is also used as a pesticide by exterminators. Say you have an infestation of wasps in your roof and they're getting inside the house. The exterminator will fire a blast of dried silica powder into an open point in the roof, and the silica dries out the nest of wasps. They become instant mummies.
Another fun fact: You can use it yourself. Just spread it on the floor where you have a bug infestation and it'll kill them. It's harmless if you don't ingest it (in fact, I believe there's even some that's food grade).
If you have bedbugs, you can surround your bed with it, and it's really effective. It also takes out cockroaches, I believe.
in fact, I believe there’s even some that’s food grade
Yes. Mostly used as anti-caking agent.
there's a silica supplement in my cabinet. it's supposed to do similar things to biotin
Anhydrous silica should absorb at most, like, 50% of its weight in water. It is not enough to dehydrate your insides, I bet that even the same amount of salt would be a bigger issue. And for most part it would be like eating sand, not exactly pleasing but not life-threatening either.
It can dry out your esophagus enough that it basically welds together. But it's non toxic! 👍
To be fair that would make me choke.
Yeah, I always wondered why a type of sand might be dangerous.