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bktheirregularSo kid brother comes home from class, and it turns out that he managed to jam a pencil into his hand by accident, and a sliver of the graphite core broke off and lodged deep in the fleshy part of his thumb's lowest joint.
Lacking a very fine set of tweezers, is there some sort of folk remedy for this? Or is it just safer to leave the graphite sliver be? (It's in there fairly deep; can be seen as a black mark on the flesh.)
Pencil graphite's not poisonous, is it?
Lacking a very fine set of tweezers, is there some sort of folk remedy for this? Or is it just safer to leave the graphite sliver be? (It's in there fairly deep; can be seen as a black mark on the flesh.)
Pencil graphite's not poisonous, is it?
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Date: 2004-09-21 04:20 pm (UTC)(frozen) no subject
Date: 2004-09-21 04:46 pm (UTC)(I started having CSI-like images flash through my mind of a chunk of graphite getting into my bloodstream somehow, so I googled it and found this: A common soft tissue foreign body happens when the tip of a pencil breaks off under the skin.... Graphite is not a harmful material. However, pencil graphite may cause a permanent (life-long) darkening of the tissue around the wound. (http://www.healthtouch.com/bin/EContent_HT/cnoteShowLfts.asp?fname=00733&title=SOFT+TISSUE+FOREIGN+BODY+&cid=HTHLTH)
(frozen) well...
Date: 2004-09-21 05:53 pm (UTC)It's a fairly common occurrance. I've got one in my left hand, and another sister has one in hers. Both delivered during childhood fights.
Tell him he just got a tattoo without paying for it.
(frozen) Ow!
Date: 2004-09-21 07:48 pm (UTC)Hope not. I still have a little black dot on each shin from pencil leads that broke off there when I was 8. (Long story. Suffice it to say zoos should not sell already-sharpened pencils in their gift shops, and accident-prone little girls should not carry them in mesh-sided bookbags.)
In all seriousness, I have no idea how to get it out -- tweezers like one would use for a wood splinter seem likely to just break it up. If it's close enough to the surface, the old wives' trick of sliding a (sterilized) sewing needle under the top layers of skin to open up space for the sliver to move might do it.
The good new is, if you can't get it out, it's pretty much just carbon. Our entire chemical makeup is based on it. :-)
(frozen) no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 01:30 am (UTC)To make it, put a slice of bread in a pan of simmering water. Wait for bread to get sort-of puffy, and then apply a dampish lump to the wound (as warm/hot as can be born) and bind in place. Allow to cool. Remove binding, and hopefully your foreign body is either out or much closer to the surface.
OTOH, I have a friend who's got a pencil tip stuck in her leg. It's been there for over 20 years and is not a problem, so perhaps it's just less effort to leave it alone!
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