When people aspirate very small amounts of food and drink and it enters the lungs, what happens to that food/liquid? Does it go away or just build up?

Question

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

Answer 1

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