# Can lungs remove food? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 24, 2002, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-lungs-remove-food/144739 "2002-12-24T17:25:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![badmana](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@badmana](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/badmana)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-lungs-remove-food/144739/1 "2002-12-24T17:25:21Z")
Today while eating lunch (fried rice) I (nearly) sent food the “wrong way”. It got me thinking…can our lungs remove food? I know I’ve heard that lungs can “clean” themselves of smoke and all sorts of other particles but can it remove food or non-food items? What if I was to breathe a bug? Or a small rock? Would they have to be removed surgically? ---
**Author:** ![Reeder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Reeder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeder)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-lungs-remove-food/144739/2 "2002-12-24T17:32:25Z")
IANAD but I don’t think food can get down into your lungs. Surely you noted the cough reflex when you nearly took the rice in the wrong way. ---
**Author:** ![badmana](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@badmana](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/badmana)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-lungs-remove-food/144739/3 "2002-12-24T17:43:06Z")
Well, I figure the reflex was supposed to prevent food from “going down the wrong way” but we all know body functions don’t always work 100% (we over ride gagging when smoking for instance). I don’t see why something tiny (rice, bugs, whatever) can’t get into your lungs, even if you cough. Heck, it happend 30 minutes ago and I’m still trying to clear my throat which may mean I still got rice in my throat…well, maybe not. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-lungs-remove-food/144739/4 "2002-12-24T17:47:39Z")
A droplet of liquid or a speck like a crumb can go into your windpipe and you’ll be coughing for a long time. Anything bigger than that and you are in deepshit. Childre have died by having a peanut get into their widpipe and that is why you should never give peanuts or anything of that size to infants. if something does get lodged in your trachea your best bet is to have someone who can do the Heimlich maneuver on you. Or you can just die and let the rest of us finish dinner. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-lungs-remove-food/144739/5 "2002-12-24T17:54:20Z")
Lots of food has had to be removed by bronchoscopy. Bits of meat, nuts, vegetables, etc. I once had a patient who was a stroke victim aspirate a hunk of celery. He coughed it up a few hours later. Damned messy. As long as the foreign body doesn’t clog up the mainstem bronchus, one can keep breathing adequately. But it’s pretty uncomfortable. QtM, MD ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-lungs-remove-food/144739/6 "2002-12-24T18:05:05Z")
BTW, I have a tendency to choke on food or drink and then cough like mad for a long, uncomfortable, time. I do not know if this is lack of coordination or that I need to pay more attention or what but it is very uncomfortable. When people like to use the perfection of the human body as an argument for the existence of God I always counter that the human body seems like a very sloppy design to me. Why not have different orifices for air and for food? Why should they be connected? We are very badly designed. ---
**Author:** ![Incubus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c68b51/32.png) [@Incubus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Incubus)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-lungs-remove-food/144739/7 "2002-12-24T19:04:50Z")
Well, thats why we have a valve in the throat called the epiglottis. Kind of works like a mail chute 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-lungs-remove-food/144739/8 "2002-12-24T19:13:33Z")
Well, I have a factoid from the 1970s floating around inside my head, and I can’t find it on the Web, so maybe it was just a factoid, but anyway… When those big beanbag chairs were first invented, they only had the one zipper closing and they tended to leak teeny styrofoam beads out into the room. And I remember being told (officially, like on the news or something), that it was dangerous to inhale those beads because they get down into your lungs and can only be removed surgically. So the beanbag chair manufacturers started making the chairs so that the problem of bead leakage went away, and I never heard any more about inhaling styrofoam beads. FWIW. Anyway, it is possible to have foreign objects get stuck and not necessarily be coughed up. [http://www.e-lungs.org/](http://www.e-lungs.org/) > [@](#): > > Foreign objects lodge more frequently in the right lung than in the left due to the length and orientation of the right bronchus. Beans, nuts, seeds or other organic matter lodged in the bronchi may lead to pneumonia. Metal or plastic objects may cause few symptoms except immediate coughing or choking. Objects should be removed via a bronchoscope. [http://www.ucihealth.com/News/UCI%20Health/Win02KidsNChoking.htm](http://www.ucihealth.com/News/UCI%20Health/Win02KidsNChoking.htm) > [@](#): > > Stay alert. Not all choking incidences are obvious. Occasionally, food or foreign objects can lodge in a child’s throat or lungs when a parent isn’t watching, causing no emergency symptoms. Over several days, this foreign matter can cause chronic coughing or wheezing—and even lead to serious infection or pneumonia. To pinpoint the problem, doctors may order X-rays. But food and other organic matter are “radiolucent”—and not readily apparent on an X-ray. In this case, specialists at University Children’s Hospital perform a bronchoscopy to look inside a child’s airways and lungs, or a largyngoscopy to check the throat. Special equipment and surgical expertise are necessary to safely remove lodged foreign objects. ---
**Author:** ![badmana](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@badmana](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/badmana)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-lungs-remove-food/144739/9 "2002-12-24T20:11:44Z")
Wow, who knew breathing was so dangerous. So with stuff like dust and smoking, how does the lungs “clean” themselves after 10 years of smoking? I remember hearing (no cites) that your lungs can clean themselves in 20-25 years. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-lungs-remove-food/144739/10 "2002-12-24T20:20:11Z")
Lungs clean themselves of small particulate matter pretty easy and regularly with the cilia (hairlike structures) that line the bronchioles and sweep it out. _Unless you smoke_. This knocks out the cilia, and prevents lung cleaning. That’s why ex-smokers can develop coughs that last for months: The cilia grow back and start catching up on their housework. But it a year or two they should be about as clean as they can get. QtM, MD ---
**Author:** ![tanstaafl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ba8739/32.png) [@tanstaafl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanstaafl)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2002, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-lungs-remove-food/144739/11 "2002-12-26T17:55:00Z")
> [@](#): > > **sailor** :When people like to use the perfection of the human body as an argument for the existence of God I always counter that the human body seems like a very sloppy design to me. Why not have different orifices for air and for food? Why should they be connected? We are very badly designed. Reminds me of a joke I once heard. “God must be a civil engineer. Who else would run a sewer line through a recreational area?” ---
**Author:** ![Scarf-Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Scarf-Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scarf-Ace)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2002, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-lungs-remove-food/144739/12 "2002-12-28T14:42:16Z")
I have to say, meringue should be banned, once got a piece stuck in my lung, with every breath it fluttered around causing horrific coughing. I reckon a good lungful of swimming pool water does the trick on soluble matter.