Can a human digest plastic?
90943
Plastic, as such, is toxic. I suggest that you take the person to the doctor immediately. It is still possible that the plastic substance is in the stomach, and doctors can take it out relatively easy. In any case, blood examinations will show if it was digested or not (everything that is eaten is soluble in stomach acids and is transfered to the blood system).
171505
Yes, the plastic will...(You get a cooler effect if you put it in a microwave though)
303934
Gee Hydrochloric Acid and Gum.  Hydrochloric acid very easily dissolvs gum if you dont believe me get some hydrochloric acid and put the gum in it and watch it dissolve.  Also even if it wasnt digested you would have to swallow an awfull lot of gum to block your intestines.  What can constipate you is cooked chicken bones, large coins, legos, corn cob, wood chips, and plastic baggies.
102201
Plastic state.  \n:-) Hope this helps!
383819
The act of eating poop.
471577
Its probably plastic suregy
765031
No, it's unable to digest it properly.  So that would either do nothing for it...or make it really sick.
72172
You should stop eating papers. The print has a lot of toxids like lead, and paper itself is made by wood, which is not digestible for humans.
17462
Yes-  it can be passed from one person to another through food, water, or contaminated objects.
803225
Think of whales. They have that siv-like stuff that strains krill and plankton stuff out of the water, to be swallowed and digested later.\n\nOk, now for a smarter explination: \n\nWhen humans eat, there's a lot more methods and reasons behind digestion than simply mechanical breakdown.\nFood starts in the mouth, where salivary amylaze, an enyzme, begins to break down starch. The mechanical process increases the surface area of the food, allowing a more rapid breakdown. Peristalsis moves food along the digestive track, partially digesting and absorbing along the way. In the stomach, chemicals from the gallbladder and pancreas are secreted to further breakdown food (with stomach fluid, "acid chyme"), and specifically protein (by enzyme "pepsin," thus the antacid medicine). This is known as "chemical digestion." Stomach muscles also aid in mixing digestive enzymes; this is what happens when your stomach lurches, bubbles (but gas can cause this also), "talks," or churns. Next, as food travels to the small and then large intestine, fat in food is absorbed in the small and water in the large.\n\nSpecies vary in the ammount of breakdown needed for their body to absorb nutrients. This describes the function of most. On the whole, animals besides humans use teeth to intimidate predators and capture prey. Some snakes swallow eggs whole, and would use teeth only to defend against the mother bird. The venus fly-trap captures flies and then disables them without teeth. Spiders don't have teeth, persay, but poisonous fangs which disable their prey--you may recall that they merely "suck" the liquids out of their food. \nAnimals equipped with other mechanisms besides teeth to capture prey have no need for them to digest.
367701
I think you mean aluminum and plastic resources. Aluminum and plastic are highly recyclable, but in some areas, they are difficult to recycle because of economic, geographic, and government factors.\n\nThe answer would depend on what people drank instead of soda. If they are drinking milk, juice, bottled water, or alcoholic beverages, which also come in cans and bottles, the answer is no.   \n\nIf people drink less fluid in general (probably not healthy), or drink tap water out of containers they re-use (like glasses or nalgene bottles), then yes. How many consumers can we reasonably expect to do that, when many folks can't even be bothered to put their aluminum cans in a separate container?
57569
Other than water, what little stuff we humans have inside us is largely dirt. Admittedly, this dirt is sometimes highly processed before we receive it, but most solids that make up humans and other creatures either are now or recently were dirt (the simple stuff that stripes the outer surface of our world, the thin paste that raises us above rocks) transformed by sunlight into plants or animals. Most of us prefer the dirt we eat in the form of cows and sheep and carrots and squash and bison and sorghum. Other dirt we’d just as soon scrape from our feet and leave at the door.\n\nBut not everyone wishes to be so far removed from the stuff of mud pies and mucilage. On every continent (except, possibly, Antarctica), some of us intentionally eat dirt, and we are joined in this practice by a myriad of rats, mice, mule deer, birds, elephants, African buffalo, cattle, tapirs, pacas, and several species of primates (1). Most scientists consider animal geophagy “normal,” probably because most soil consumption by animals has no obvious adverse effects and is sometimes beneficial (2); however, some of these same scientists consider most (or all) human geophagy “abnormal.”\n\nPathological consumption of soil, “soil pica,” is associated with several psychological abnormalities. But all ingestion of soil is not soil pica. How much soil a person has to eat to be considered ill is not known. One report described soil pica in a developmentally disabled person who regularly consumed more than 50 g of soil per day (3). Most of us would consider that level of geophagy at least potentially pathological, although I am not sure why.
441183
Currently, the polymer sodium polyacrylate.  It is nicknamed "super slurper" because it can absorb 400-800 times its body weight in water.  Oh yeah, it is used in a variety of applications, including diapers.  Pretty cool, huh?
1117695
Human cells do eat human cells.  In fact the process of cell-eating is called phagocytosis, and the eater is known as the phagocyte.  Phagocytes are commonly referred to as white blood cells.  \n\nDead cells can come in the form of many things.  I classify them into 2 groups, externally and internally.  \n\nFirstly, skin shedding is the process in which our dead skin cells get away from our body.  They are removed by bathing or scratching.  Sometimes, they just drop off or get blown away by the wind.  That's why, wherever you go, you are actually leaving bits and pieces of yourself everywhere.  The body continuously gets rid of dead cells and scientists estimate that by 7 years, your body would have replaced all old cells into new ones.  It can be said that you are a new you.  Unfortunately, our brain cells do not die away and get replaced.....pity we don't get smarter.\n\nInternal dead cells refer to the digestive track, in which the cells lining our alimentary canal drop of, and get carried away by the poop.  Our poop mainly consists of dead cells that have attached themselves to it, undigested food (fiber) and bacteria.  You see, pooping does not relieve you of a tummy ache.  It helps cleanse your body.\n\nNext, not all cells which are dead get disposed off.  Some living cells, such as red blood cells gets broken down in the spleen.  When they are broken down, the materials that made it can still be reused.  For example, when RBCs are broken down, hemoglobin is released and further broken down into iron which is stored in the liver.  Phagocytes play a part in the breaking down of such substances.
1036779
I do not want to look at poop in a plastic bag. And no can't say I have ever had the occasion to poop in a plastic bag. But I guess if you were in a 18 wheeler with one of those men who are absolute non-stop for anything road driving aholics, then you would do pretty much anything for some relief.\nI know one woman told me to never start out for Calf. without stopping and buying a Big Gulp for future and further use.
419054
you can search the internet for "recycling plastic materials" in your area, there are many manufacturers who colect (they pay for this kind of waste) PE, PP, PS, ABS or PET and made granules from it, selling them after for more, as raw material.
36986
Gum is eliminated as human waste in the same way — and at the same rate — as any other swallowed matter. Granted, it comes out the far end relatively unchanged by the trip, but it does come out on schedule.