![]() (Image: Baobao, an 18-year-old Mongolian girl eating dirt) 3. ![]() Too much plaster might lead to fatal lead poisoning, for instance, and consuming clay can lead to a potentially deadly intestinal blockage. Pagophagia is the compulsive eating of ice coprophagia describes eating (often animal) feces coniophagia involves - get this - the pathological consumption of dust from Venetian blinds.Īnd pica can be fatal. Strangely, the same such cravings pop up so often they have their own names. At least 10% of kids enjoy eating dirt or paste or plaster, but adults suffering from pica often develop unusual tastes. Pica, an eating disorder in which sufferers feel compelled to eat nonfood items, is usually seen in children. Unpleasant, sure, but better than blowing up on the operating table. The problem usually occurs during colonic surgery, when heat (or spark) comes into contact with flammable intestinal gases after inadequate "bowel evacuation." The resulting explosion is sometimes fatal.Īnyone who's ever suffered from colon surgery can tell you exactly what "bowel evacuation" entails - you drink a laxative the day before surgery and find yourself in the bathroom with enough time to read Anna Karenina. Once in a while, though, someone will blow up from gas. And although any 11-year-old with a matchbook and curiosity knows that gas passed is flammable (since it contains primarily hydrogen and methane), it's not dangerous for the excessively gassy to work around open flames. Put bluntly, that's somewhere between 13 and 17 daily farts. The average person expels about a half liter of gas per day. Sounds like a third-grade punch line, but maybe it's so funny because it's true. On the long list of unpleasant ways to die, it's hard to imagine anything topping "exploding colon." We'll take the stomach flu, heartburn, death by paper cuts even! Just please, please, spare us these fates.
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