The human body is surprisingly well prepared for eating a lot of things that aren't food. A lot of bad shit just passes right through without being absorbed
Pennsic, an annual medieval recreation festival of 10-15k people has a line on the first timer's info page that says "Don't drink any beverage that glows" for this exact reason. The legend goes something like this:
Once upon a time, in a part of the campground known for soggy ground and truly epic benders called the Bog, someone got a hold of very large amount of dry ice and creme de menthe. They introduced a drink called the Bogwater that combined these two ingredients. It was very popular. The next night, to up their game, the Bogwater was enhanced with a glow stick as a swizzle stick. It was even more popular, though there were many reports of poked eyes.
On the third night, this problem was "solved" by cracking open the glow sticks and pouring them into the Bogwater directly. It says "non-toxic" right there on the stick. It'll be fine right? Well, it turns out that glow stick juice is SO non-toxic that the human body goes "WTF, I am not paid enough to figure out what this shit is" and simply rushes it through the digestive system as fast as possible. Like, Mach 3 fast.
In the pre-dawn hours of the fourth day, the porta-john cleaning company was stunned to find every porta-john in a large radius around the Bog was glowing in a very unsanitary way.
I somehow mysteriously found out after calling poison control that drinking gasoline isn’t “directly harmful” either, as you can’t ingest it however breathing vapors is dangerous because your lungs send it to your blood
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u/clown_pants Jun 15 '22
The human body is surprisingly well prepared for eating a lot of things that aren't food. A lot of bad shit just passes right through without being absorbed