People are always complaining about what actually construes science, and I’m guessing that it’s scientific studies like this one investigating how long it takes to poo out a LEGO head that massively contribute to this conversation.
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The study took place back in 2018 and was called ‘Everything Is Awesome: Don’t Forget The Lego’. It involved six scientists swallowing a LEGO head and then calculating the average time for it to get pooped out by their bodies.
Here’s what the study found out:
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Children frequently ingest coins (generally with minimal reported side effects); however, the ingestion of other items has been subject to less academic study.
Parental concern regarding ingestion applies across a range of materials. In this study, we aimed to determine typical transit times for another commonly swallowed object: a Lego figurine head.
Six paediatric health-care professionals were recruited to swallow a Lego head.
Previous gastrointestinal surgery, inability to ingest foreign objects and aversion to searching through faecal matter were all exclusion criteria.
Pre-ingestion bowel habit was standardised by the Stool Hardness and Transit (SHAT) score.
Participants ingested a Lego head, and the time taken for the object to be found in the participants stool was recorded.
The primary outcome was the Found and Retrieved Time (FART) score.
On average the lego head took 1.71 days to appear.
There was some evidence that females may be more accomplished at searching through their stools than males, but this could not be statistically validated.
The study also concluded that a toy object passes through with no complications.
This will reassure parents, and the authors advocate that no parent should be expected to search through their child’s faeces to prove object retrieval.
Yeah I mean those guys really are taking the pxss (or shxt) aren’t they? They’ve even called the scores the FART and SHAT scores FFS. They could at least try and pretend that they’re performing a very serious scientific experiment here rather than just dossing about, you know?
Anyway, finding that a LEGO head takes almost two days to get pooped out is somewhat useful I suppose. I kinda figure that parents might get worried if they see their kid eating a LEGO head so it’s good for them to know when to freak out if it hasn’t come through. Although that also seems to entail digging through your child’s poop to look for it as that’s what these scientists have to do.
I know that people are super protective over their children, but maybe just don’t get so worried if they swallow a LEGO head and let nature run its course? Chances are it will be OK, at least according to this study. Maybe it was beneficial after all.
For more of the same, check out this guy who made a wall in his house entirely out of LEGO. Why?
