# Is tiny amounts of my own poop toxic to me?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-tiny-amounts-of-my-own-poop-toxic-to-me/732630>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [September 26, 2015, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-tiny-amounts-of-my-own-poop-toxic-to-me/732630 "2015-09-26T21:19:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Habeed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a587f6/32.png) [@Habeed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Habeed)\
**Post date:** [September 26, 2015, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-tiny-amounts-of-my-own-poop-toxic-to-me/732630/1 "2015-09-26T21:19:32Z")

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So you’ve probably heard that conventional toilets, when they flush, spray everything in the bathroom with a fine mist of fecal matter. Most people use toilet paper, which leaves a streaky residue that gets in the underpants and mixes with all your clothes in the washer. If the clothes washer isn’t set to hot water/conventional bleach, it’ll probably put a small amount of poop on everything in the wash tub.

And so on. Poop everywhere. So this got me thinking - just a few meters of intestine separate the area where the poop gets made and my stomach. My stomach also has lots of acid in it. Surely my own poop, if ingested in small quantities, won’t make me sick in any way, right?

For that matter, what if someone ate their own poop…?

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**Author:** ![Mrdeals](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ea666f/32.png) [@Mrdeals](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mrdeals)\
**Post date:** [September 26, 2015, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-tiny-amounts-of-my-own-poop-toxic-to-me/732630/2 "2015-09-26T21:38:28Z")

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Not a doctor or anything. But the existence of scat porn and coprophagia makes me think it won’t kill you. Whether it’s harmful or not, hopefully that’s something another Straight Doper can help with.

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**Author:** ![SanDiegoTim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/85e7bf/32.png) [@SanDiegoTim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanDiegoTim)\
**Post date:** [September 26, 2015, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-tiny-amounts-of-my-own-poop-toxic-to-me/732630/3 "2015-09-26T21:44:28Z")

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What’s that old saying…Eat shit and die.

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**Author:** ![race\_to\_the\_bottom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c4cdca/32.png) [@race\_to\_the\_bottom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/race_to_the_bottom)\
**Post date:** [September 26, 2015, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-tiny-amounts-of-my-own-poop-toxic-to-me/732630/4 "2015-09-26T21:48:34Z")

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If you have poop in your underwear you are doing something wrong. I stopped wearing underwear in the hippie days, and have never had a problem with scat on my clothes.

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**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\
**Post date:** [September 26, 2015, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-tiny-amounts-of-my-own-poop-toxic-to-me/732630/5 "2015-09-26T22:11:26Z")

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[The Master speaks](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2600/is-coprophagia-dangerous)