What happens if you swallow pennies

Swallowed Foreign Object. Is this your child's symptom? Swallows a non-food solid object Adult suspects an object was swallowed Includes object found in the stool with no history of it being swallowed. Sometimes, a young child swallows an object when no one is around. Finding it in a stool is the first evidence that this has happened.

Types of Objects Swallowed by Children Coins. The most common swallowed object. Usually safe except for quarters. Call your child's doctor to be sure. Coin diameters are 18 mm dime , 19 mm penny , 21 mm nickel and 24 mm quarter. Source: U. Small blunt non-sharp objects. Toy parts, game parts, small buttons, rings, some earrings, paper clips, teeth. Usually safe if not sharp. Button batteries serious. Needs urgent removal. See below for details. Magnets serious. Sharp or pointed objects serious.

Include needles, pins, pushpins, tacks, nails, screws, toothpicks, some earrings. Pine needles, bones, bottle caps, aluminum pull tabs are also considered sharp. Most need urgent removal. Sharp objects can become stuck and lead to a puncture in the digestive tract. Small pieces of glass generally pass without any symptoms. Food Chunks. Large pieces of meat can get stuck on the way to the stomach. A search of the medical literature failed to turn up similar reports, although veterinary journals have reported difficulties in dogs, cats and zoo animals that swallowed pennies.

That caused O'Hara and her colleagues to launch a study. They used silver coins and pennies from before and after the switch to zinc, putting the coins in hydrochloric acid to mimic conditions in a human stomach. They found that after a week, the silver coins and copper pennies were unaffected, but the newer zinc pennies with copper coatings were eaten away by the acid, losing 5 to 8 percent of their weight.

Zinc reacts with stomach juices to form hydrogen gas and zinc chloride, which can cause stomach ulcers. The Duke experiment probably understates what happens in the stomach, O'Hara said, because the penny pulled from the boy's stomach had lost about 25 percent of its weight in just two days.

If the child starts having stomach pain or vomiting, bring the child to an emergency room and report that a penny was swallowed. Materials provided by Duke University Medical Center. Note: Content may be edited for style and length. Science News. ScienceDaily, 1 December Duke University Medical Center. Retrieved November 8, from www. Print Email Share. Just a Game? Living Well. View all the latest top news in the environmental sciences, or browse the topics below:. Keyword: Search.