How does activated charcoal help against ingested poison?
In: Chemistry
Activated charcoal is charcoal that have gone through a process forming lots of extremely tiny structures in it. These structures will be able to trap bigger molecules like poisons but let smaller molecules like water and ions alone. So if you eat activated charcoal you will essentially slow down your digestion process as it will bind to any of the larger molecules and therefore slow down the absorption of poison into your body.
The question has already been answered but I just wanna expand on the science a bit more because I think it’s really neat.
Activated charcoal has undergone a process to make it porous that *dramatically* increases its surface area – one gram can have as much surface area as a football field.
It’s essentially bored through with many tiny holes, like tunnels. Consider the area of rock face exposed to air when you tunnel through a mountain. You lose twice the area of the tunnel entrances, but you gain the entire interior of the tunnel. Many tunnels means lots of exposure.
I’m just gonna sum up my story with this. So when I was 14 I used to be on Lexapro (antidepressant). And I got into a very heated fight with my parents. I got really pissed and I grabbed the bottle. I dumped all the pills into my mouth and swallowed all of them. It was a pretty new script so I took more than 20. I went to the hospital, but by then they couldn’t really do anything because the pills were absorbed. My mom was with me and it just so happens that she’s a nurse at that hospital. She was pissed too and she was hoping that I’d be forced to puke or something uncomfortable like that. Then she says to one of the nurses “Maybe we should give him some charcoal.” So then the nurse brings me this big ass cup filled with an activated charcoal drink. I had to drink all of it. It was pitch black and it had the thickness of a milkshake. The taste was almost sweet, but not really. Somehow it wasn’t even bad and I actually kind of liked it. Then for like the next 2 weeks my shit was pitch black when I wiped 😂
But I have the answer to the question though. The charcoal drink is pretty heavy and thick like a milkshake. It absorbs whatever is in your stomach. For example, in my case the charcoal was supposed to absorb the Lexapro so less of it would be absorbed into my blood stream.
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