If a LEGO is Swallowed, How Long Does it Take to be Pooped Out?

This is one of those published research papers I had to wonder if it was for real or not... but it appears to be genuine in spite of the jocular tone of the article. Published in the Journal of Pediatrics and Child Health , researchers swallowed small LEGO pieces and then monitored bowel movements to determine how long it took before it got pooped out. The general point of the study being that children often swallow toy objects and as long as it doesn't get stuck in the throat (and lack…

11/28/2018 0

Continue Reading

How Much Urine in Swimming Pools?

Image courtesy of Exsodus at  FreeDigitalPhotos.net In 2013, I wrote a blog article about how much fecal matter (i.e., poop) is typically found in swimming pools (up to 2.2 pounds in a typical pool if 100 different people enter the pool). We now have an estimate of how much urine (i.e., pee) is found in a typical pool. According to Canadian researchers , a 220,000 gallon pool, which is about one-third of an Olympic-sized pool, had 75 liters of urine while another smaller pool (110,000 ga…

3/02/2017 0

Continue Reading

Swimming Pools, Poop, and Ear Infections

So here's an interesting statistic... The average person has 0.14 grams of feces on their rear end. If a person does not shower prior to swimming, that 0.14 grams of stool gets washed off into the swimming pool. Kids tend to have a bit more stool on their rear end (up to 10 grams). See references below. That means if 100 individuals enter the swimming pool in any given day without showering beforehand, anywhere from 14 grams to 1 kilogram of stool enter the swimming pool water (0.03 - 2…

7/19/2013 1

Continue Reading

Fecal Transplantation Administered Through the NOSE!

Fecal transplant is nothing new as it has been around since the 1950's... It is used to treat multi-drug resistant clostridium dificile infection by replacing the "bad" gut bacteria with normal "good" bacteria. However, what is new is the fact that such fecal transplantation is being administered through the nose using a tube threaded into the small bowel. [Thanks to  @GuildfordENT who brought this to my attention!] Historically, such fecal transplantation (aka fec…

5/02/2013 0

Continue Reading

How is Sinusitis Like Diarrhea, Germs and All?

A normal human body is composed of more "bacteria" cells than "human" cells. Indeed, the bacteria collectively living inside a normal healthy person would fill a half-gallon jug; numerically, there are probably 10 times more bacterial cells in the body than human cells. Though the majority of these bacteria have no known effect on the human body (good or bad), some of these organisms perform tasks that participate in maintaining health and are deemed necessary members o…

9/23/2012 0

Continue Reading