So I probably just drank ground glass, now what?

When I was young, I remember hearing about how one way to assasinate someone is to slip ground glass in their food, its impossible to notice while consuming but will subsequently tear up their Stomach or G.I Tract. At this particularly junction in time I’d be extremely interested to know if there is any truth to this?!

Welp, I don’t think anyone’s out to get me, but I do believe I might have just consumed a non-trivial amount of glass. :smack:

For those of you unfamiliar with Arizona Icetea, a number of their products are sold in 550ml glass bottles with tightly wrapped plastic on the exterior, see here for example. So by now perhaps you can start to envision how I came to find myself in my current predicament. I opened a bottle that appeared perfectly normal from the outside, consumed about 80-90 % of it, then noticed a very sublte dimple in the wrapped plastic (which may have only been there because the liquid previously holding the shape in place was gone), I quickly realized that there was a golfball sized hole in the glass and that there were shards stuck all along the inside of the bottle.

Before everyone starts posting "IANA"s, allow me to post my own…

IANACI (I am not an Complete Idiot), I’ve already called a doctor and they weren’t overly concerned, though they then called me back a few minutes later with more questions but ultimately felt that its too late to do anything.

So, does anyone happen to have any information that could compliment the medical advice I’ve already sought? Is their any merit to the urban legend I heard when I was young?

And should the company that makes these drinks perhaps consider a safer design for the exterior?

Well, if the doctor’s office wasn’t freaking out then I’d WAG that you’re fine.

Besides, wouldn’t the stomach acid dissolve the glass anyway? I’d check Snopes but I’m lazy. I’m sure it will have info on that urban legend.

Do keep us posted though. It would be a little scary if you didn’t respond ever.

Here you go:

YOU’RE GONNA DIE!

Glass, even shards, sink. Unless you shook it up before every sip, I think you’re probably ok.

And yes, they should consider a safer design, which is why you should write them an email and get coupons for free AZ iced tea. (And then rip the plastic from every single one, presumably.)

The snopes article was a good read, it turns out the original story I heard was indeed an urban legend, however there was plenty of discouraging content in there too :frowning:

"But very fine glass is unlikely to cause any lethal damage to the GI tract. It would be more of an irritation, with minor bleeding if any at all.
**
Even with coarser glass, the bleeding would probably not be massive or life-threatening but slow and lead to anemia and fatigue…

Splinters of glass, now, provide a different story. Splinters and broken sections of glass may cut the esophagus, the sttomach and the intestines, with most unpleasant consequences, including death.** But it is harder to get people to accept glass splinters: they begin to get suspicious."

I haven’t played with the bottle extensively subsequent to discovering the problem. I poured out the remainder of the beverage into a closed sink to look for any obvious contaminents, though I think its unlikely that anyone did this on purpose. Perhaps if I attempted to fish out all the bits of glass stuck to the side of the bottle, I could get a better idea how much I might have consumed.

Please carefully check your BM’s for any traces of blood, next few days. Any traces any odd pains call your MD back.
Autolycus; only Hydrofloric Acid dissolves glass- and you have dilute Hydrocloric Acid down there, which doesn’t dissolve glass at all. In fact- *concentrated *HCl is stored in glass.

Wouldn’t powdered glass be pretty close to sand?

And it really doesn’t take that much sand in your food to make it virtually inedible. The mere fact that you’re not entirely certain whether you even consumed any glass leads me to believe that you’re going to be fine.

But of course you should call your doctor again if anything’s not quite right.

@Mbossa, sand is like miniature rounded marbles, broken glass is like miniature razor blades.

@xiix what DrDeth means is examine your sh/t for blood, maybe that is obvious but it took me a few seconds to wonder why your ‘Body Mass’ was relevant. IANAD but no Asparin, and I would eat soft foods, olive oil and cooked fine oats - lubricants and gentle roughage.

To be realistic anyone who has smacked open a wine or beer bottle has probably ingested a few fragments of glass, but if you start sh/tting blood or feeling strange, then run for a doctor.

According to my Dictionary Of Misinformation, ‘Glass ground finely enough not to be noticable on ingestion, is an ineffective poison. It’s too well ground to cause damage.’ The dictionary goes on to cite a British legal case wherein a doctor proved this by consuming a spoonfull of glass in open court.

If you’d swallowed a piece large enough to be dangerous, you would have noticed.

Well, hydrofluoric acid, bad coffee, and good chili. But other than those three, nothing.

I have to agree with SailedTheOceanBlue, YOURE GONNA DIE! …eventually, possibly of cancer, a heart attack, maybe a nasty fungle infection, but not from this.

Just a personal observation but instead of “wiping”, you might consier a “blot”.

Good luck as you… ummm… pass ass glass en masse.

If you are really into checking your stool for damage, you probably want to look for a ground coffee looking substance. That would be the remnants from bleeding in the upper GI tract.

There are people who “east” brojen glass. There was even a fad of doing it circa 20 years ago (there was an article on it in, I think, Time magazine) – students nibbling light bulbs into little bits and swallowing it. There was a picture with the article.

Sand, by the way, is not like rounded marbles. You’ve evidently never body-surfed on a New Jersey beach. It is more likely to be rounded off that freshly-broken glass frit, but it’ll still have sharp edges.

I wouldn’t deliberatelt eat glass, myself, but enough people have done it – and in larger quantities than chance falloff from a bottle’s mouth – that I don’t think it’ll kill you.

I have finally found a reason to be grateful for my obsessive habit (very irritating to my wife) of peeling off the label of any bottle I am drinking from (Arizona ice tea, snapple, beer - of course with the beer bottle it takes a while, but the Arizona ice tea wrapper is usually off before I open the bottle.)

I agree that keeping an eye on your stools for blood is probably prudent, just in case. Besides bright red blood, you’ll also want to watch for maroon or black and tarry appearing stool (though if you’re on an iron supplement or take Pepto-Bismol, they might already look like that) with an especially foul, rotten odor. The blood can look different depending on where a bleeding source is located in your GI tract.

If you want a safer design for the glass part of the bottle, you could always make it out of tempered glass. That way, if the bottle gets impacted it will shatter into small cubes instead of shards. Also, you will have a tougher time trying to stab somebody with a broken bottle.

Does anybody make bottles like this? If not, can one of you lawyer types draft up a patent application for me? :smiley:

FYI, I happened to notice for the first time that on the bottle cap there is large emboldened warning “** Inspect Bottle For Signs of Breakage Before Drinking**”

so much for my multimilliion dolalr lawsuit :frowning: