Acids only become dangerous once you get lower than two on the pH scale, which is about the acidity of lemon juice, but ammonia is poisonous and it’s only 11, four steps away from neutral.
If you look at diagrams like [this](https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/860_SS_pH.png), it feels like acids become a problem a lot more “abruptly” than bases do. Is there a reason for this?
In: Chemistry
The pH scale is logarithmic so pH 1 is 10x more acidic than pH 2 etc. Since your stomach is full of pH1 acid, anything consumed makes absolutely no difference. Since our body can work with pH1 it frankly doesn’t care.
Next, look at how many of the acids are naturally occurring. Our bodies have been dealing with these for thousands of years and have evolved pretty well to do so. The bases are much more modern and therefore we don’t have natural compensations.
Finally, when you’re adding a weaker acid to a strong acid there is no reaction. If you’re adding a base to an acid there’ll be a reaction and all the human made ions will go nuts throughout your system which your body is not equipped to deal with.
Your body uses acid to digest food, so it has a pretty high tolerance for acidic things when you eat it. You’ll notice that most of the stuff on that chart you put up is food on the acid side. You’ve got a lot of systems in your body for dealing with acids (Especially ones you eat). So it just seems like they aren’t as strong from that chart.
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