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December 21, 2007
Q. Well, excuse us, but when might stomach or intestinal gas have far more explosive consequences?
A. Forget those flame-throwing flatulators of college campuses of the 1960s. For this one, you can just ask your doctor: Surgical teams must take precautions to ensure that fires and explosions do not occur near or within a patient, since some 40 percent of the gas in the large intestine may be hydrogen and methane, says Jearl Walker in “The Flying Circus of Physics.” Procedures such as removal of polyps require extreme care. Any heating or sparking during electrical cauterization can cause the gases to blow up, burning and rupturing the intestines. During one colonoscopy, there was a loud explosion and a blue flame shot out of the colonoscope for about a meter. Current protocol calls for the patient to fast for up to a day so that the intestines are empty. (Surgical fires today are rare, estimated at less than 1 in a million.)
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