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Is it possible to inhale an insect into your lungs? Well, your airway has two important defences to prevent this. First, the trachea (airway) is coated with mucus that will tend to trap small insects, with tiny hair cells that constantly sweep trapped particles back up. Secondly, we have a very sensitive reflex that causes a coughing fit when anything touches the walls of the trachea.<\/p>
To suppress this reflex, you would normally need to be drugged or unconscious and it\u2019s unlikely you\u2019d be taking deep breaths. Any bug that did make it inside would not survive long, but its tiny corpse\u00a0could cause an infection leading to aspiration pneumonia which is a serious condition if untreated.<\/p>
Read more:<\/strong><\/p> Asked by: Megan Harrison, Hertfordshire<\/strong><\/p> To submit your questions email us at questions@sciencefocus.com (don’t forget to include your name and location)<\/em><\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n By Luis Villazon Published: Thursday, 17 August 2023 at 17:00 PM Is it possible to inhale an insect into your lungs? Well, your airway has two important defences to prevent this. First, the trachea (airway) is coated with mucus that will tend to trap small insects, with tiny hair cells that constantly sweep trapped particles […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":32631,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"< 1"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/08\/heres-what-happens-if-you-accidentally-inhale-a-bug.jpg",1200,800,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/08\/heres-what-happens-if-you-accidentally-inhale-a-bug-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/08\/heres-what-happens-if-you-accidentally-inhale-a-bug-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/08\/heres-what-happens-if-you-accidentally-inhale-a-bug-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/08\/heres-what-happens-if-you-accidentally-inhale-a-bug-1024x683.jpg",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/08\/heres-what-happens-if-you-accidentally-inhale-a-bug.jpg",1200,800,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/08\/heres-what-happens-if-you-accidentally-inhale-a-bug.jpg",1200,800,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Luis Villazon Published: Thursday, 17 August 2023 at 17:00 PM Is it possible to inhale an insect into your lungs? Well, your airway has two important defences to prevent this. First, the trachea (airway) is coated with mucus that will tend to trap small insects, with tiny hair cells that constantly sweep trapped particles…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/32630"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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