Author: Bethany Brookshire / Source: Science News for Students
Legos are always up for travel. Sometimes, they head all the way to space, as in The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part. More often, Legos voyage through the homes and yards of the kids that play with them.
But sometimes, they travel into the kids themselves. But parents shouldn’t worry. Legos go right through the body in just a few days. A group of physicians confirmed that. They swallowed Legos — and checked their poop to confirm the toys made a successful journey.It’s not too surprising that a kid might end up snacking on a random Lego brick or two. The toys are tiny and candy-colored. When a child eats a brick, though, parents rush to the hospital, terrified that their kid may suffer a Lego-induced demise. Tessa Davis can calm their fears. She is an emergency pediatrician — someone who treats medical emergencies in children — at Royal London Hospital in England. She’s one of the physicians who downed a Lego — for science, of course.
“It’s actually really common,” Davis says. “We see at least one child a day swallowing something they shouldn’t have.” The most common swallowed items are coins, she says. But anything left lying around — such as a Lego — is in danger. Most of the time, unless the object is sharp or toxic (such as a battery), it will just go right through the child and come out the other end.
No matter how much Davis has tried to reassure parents, though, they kept worrying. So she and five other doctors decided to do the ultimate test. They each swallowed the head of a Lego figure. Why a Lego head? “Lego…
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