It’s because you don’t want those chemicals to come back up through the esophagus and risk doing more damage. That’s the quick answer I got from my First Aid course.
Way back in the day when I first became an EMT, this was part of our training. If it’s something acidic, it created burns on the way down, then got mixed with stomach acid. So bringing it back up will make the burns worse. So a binding agent (we used to have activated charcoal on the ambulance) would be used to bind up the acid. For non-acid chemicals, vomiting would be the way to go.
Chemicals that burn and/or are corrosive will wreak havoc on your oesophagus, sinuses, mouth and lungs. Swallowing them probably did damage, vomiting them up gives more exposure to those soft tissues, and it can potentially end up being inhaled as well
But once its inside your stomach its rather safe there. Your stomach is well protected by a slimy layer and regenerates super fast.
You throat and mouth not, if you vomit your throat and mouth get into contact with the chemical twice and also with your digestive stomach acid.
Depending where you live, you may have an emergency poison hotline, you can call this one and ask what to do after drinkink this specific chemical, cleaning agent,….
Depending on the chemical they advise you to drink water or milk or juice or…… Or eat something specific, or in some cases vomit. But it does depend on the substance and whats good for one is bad for the other.
Because throwing up can make things way worse. If the chemical is corrosive (like bleach or drain cleaner), vomiting can burn your throat and mouth again on the way back up. And if it’s something like gasoline, there’s a risk of inhaling it into your lungs, which is super dangerous. That’s why poison control usually recommends drinking water or milk to dilute it instead of puking.
The simple answer to this question is:
Most chemicals will not hurt you.
We used to try to remove toxins that would make you sick— like “pumping your stomach” or using ipecac to induce vomiting. It turns out that the risk of aspiration (inhaling stuff) due to vomiting outweighs the benefit of vomiting most of the time.
There are exceptions to this. Calcium channel blockers, iron tablets, tricyclic antidepressants, and others are fairly toxic, so it might be warranted to either empty the stomach with suction or do whole bowel irrigation (basically force feed a laxative) to keep the body from absorbing this.
In most cases we simply do nothing and observe or administer activated charcoal which can suck up a fair amount of bad stuff.
Call poison control/go to the ER, there isn’t a hard fast rule that applies to all things. They will advise on how to best manage based on the specific chemicals.
A lot of chemicals are harmful because of their physical properties like acidity, caustic etc. The stomach has a big fat glob of goo covering it made of the amino acid L-glutamine that’s very good at not being broken down, but your throat not so much, so vomiting up acid etc can cause severe damage to the throat which, if you’re unlucky and have something like Esophageal varices from too much drinking you can literally bleed to death in under a minute.
Comments
Your stomach is already decent at handling “bad things”.
So sometimes it’s safer to just let those things run their course, than to force them back up through your throat/mouth/sinuses.
Note: not medical advice, please consult poison control for recommended actions
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Simple, you don’t want the chemicals to go up the pipe cause there is the potential for more damage done to it.
It’s because you don’t want those chemicals to come back up through the esophagus and risk doing more damage. That’s the quick answer I got from my First Aid course.
Way back in the day when I first became an EMT, this was part of our training. If it’s something acidic, it created burns on the way down, then got mixed with stomach acid. So bringing it back up will make the burns worse. So a binding agent (we used to have activated charcoal on the ambulance) would be used to bind up the acid. For non-acid chemicals, vomiting would be the way to go.
Chemicals that burn and/or are corrosive will wreak havoc on your oesophagus, sinuses, mouth and lungs. Swallowing them probably did damage, vomiting them up gives more exposure to those soft tissues, and it can potentially end up being inhaled as well
Because you might cause further chemical burns or aspirate the chemical.
This depends on the chemicals.
But once its inside your stomach its rather safe there. Your stomach is well protected by a slimy layer and regenerates super fast.
You throat and mouth not, if you vomit your throat and mouth get into contact with the chemical twice and also with your digestive stomach acid.
Depending where you live, you may have an emergency poison hotline, you can call this one and ask what to do after drinkink this specific chemical, cleaning agent,….
Depending on the chemical they advise you to drink water or milk or juice or…… Or eat something specific, or in some cases vomit. But it does depend on the substance and whats good for one is bad for the other.
Because throwing up can make things way worse. If the chemical is corrosive (like bleach or drain cleaner), vomiting can burn your throat and mouth again on the way back up. And if it’s something like gasoline, there’s a risk of inhaling it into your lungs, which is super dangerous. That’s why poison control usually recommends drinking water or milk to dilute it instead of puking.
If it burns on the way down it’ll burn on the way back up too. Your esophagus and mouth don’t have the same “protections” your stomach does.
The simple answer to this question is:
Most chemicals will not hurt you.
We used to try to remove toxins that would make you sick— like “pumping your stomach” or using ipecac to induce vomiting. It turns out that the risk of aspiration (inhaling stuff) due to vomiting outweighs the benefit of vomiting most of the time.
There are exceptions to this. Calcium channel blockers, iron tablets, tricyclic antidepressants, and others are fairly toxic, so it might be warranted to either empty the stomach with suction or do whole bowel irrigation (basically force feed a laxative) to keep the body from absorbing this.
In most cases we simply do nothing and observe or administer activated charcoal which can suck up a fair amount of bad stuff.
Source: ER doctor.
imagine if you ran over someone and then tried to “fix” it by reversing back over them
Call poison control/go to the ER, there isn’t a hard fast rule that applies to all things. They will advise on how to best manage based on the specific chemicals.
A lot of chemicals are harmful because of their physical properties like acidity, caustic etc. The stomach has a big fat glob of goo covering it made of the amino acid L-glutamine that’s very good at not being broken down, but your throat not so much, so vomiting up acid etc can cause severe damage to the throat which, if you’re unlucky and have something like Esophageal varices from too much drinking you can literally bleed to death in under a minute.
It also makes diagnosis more difficult. Is vomiting an effect of whatever you swallowed or is it just because you did it intentionally?