Quick shout-out question: embedded graphite splinter

[bktheirregular]

So 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?

Comments

(frozen)

[alopekis.livejournal.com]

I had that happen to me as a kid, and it never did me any harm. I hadn't thought about in a long time, but I've always assumed it dissolved or something, as it's not there now.

(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)