I’m asking specifically about when you have just a little bit of food matter or liquid “go down the wrong pipe” and it doesn’t make you choke or have to get it removed. Does something happen to it after it enters the lungs?
In: Biology
Liquids are easily absorbed into your bloodstream through your lungs(as long as it’s small amounts) and either eliminated through your kidneys or used by the body.
Solids are harder and you will, generally, cough them “up” to at least the point where your esophagus and wind pipe separate so that your body can move it into your stomach.
If they are small enough particles they can also be absorbed into your blood stream over time.
If they are somewhere in between small enough to be absorbed and large enough to be coughed up then it will be surrounded by a layer of mucus and your body will(very, very slowly) break up the food and carry it away like any other waste.
The cells in your lungs have tiny hair like strands that beat and move substances up and out of the lungs.
You constantly produce mucus in the lungs that will trap small debris/pathogens and it gets passed up and usually then swallowed where stomach acid kills the pathogens.
These hairs don’t work in people with cystic fibrosis and they need help to clear the lungs with massage.
Edit: spelling of mucus
for 99.99% of cases if you don’t cough it up now, the lungs will cover it in extra mucus and you will cough it up later
other times it stays in the lungs neither being absorber nor removed such as the time a [tree was growing in a guys lung](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1169861/Shocked-Russian-surgeons-open-man-thought-tumour–FIR-TREE-inside-lung.html), who supposedly inhaled a seed and it sprouted inside, the doctors thought it was cancer
I don’t know but my father had surgery. They thought lung cancer. Turned out to be pigeon poop, so there’s that.
He was really scared. True story. I guess poop doesn’t break down that fast.
Someone who is healthy will cough it up or have it cleared by the ciliary escalator. Somebody who is old and/or has neurological problems with impaired ability to cough and swallow can silently aspirate food and liquids for months or years until they eventually develop aspiration pneumonia.
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