You've all been lied to!!!
 

Everyone will probably think i'm retarded but I just found out tonight that silica gel packets aren't really poisonus. You know what I'm talking about... the little packages you always find in your new shoes. It just says don't eat because the packaging can be a choking hazard. wow i'm 24 and still learning something new everyday!

haha, thats funny, and to think i wshed my hands evey time i touched on of those...hahaha

http://www.cafepress.com/disinfo.7895029

Really wow, what if you eat them. Have you tried!
learn something new everyday

UPDATE:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/question206.htm

I always just accepted that they were poisonis

Hahahah, how random....Thats pretty amusing though!

I'm still not going to eat them though...

The beef jerkey ones are tasty.

Silica is one of those things that is harmless/harmful only depending on its physical form. We're more familiar with SiO2 in glass. Silicon that's passivated by an oxide layer is fairly inert. You wouldn't ingest glass (under any normal cirumstances, anyway!) but if ground into a fine enough powder, it's very easy to create a dust of silica and accidentally inhale some. That's the bigger danger here. Breathing in fine silica dust can cause severe damage to your lungs and respiratory tract (think of it as breathing in little microscopic shards of glass that have an affinty for absorbing water from mucous membranes). Silica is often used as a material to help separate mixtures of chemical compounds, and it's always a good idea to work under a fume hood and preferably, with a face mask. Check out the Material Safety Data Sheet:

http://www.jtbaker.com/msds/englishhtml/s1610.htm

The silica gel or beads in those little packets have the useful property of absorbing and holding onto water molecules from moisture in the air, but are still large enough that they probably won't make a dust cloud form. So there you have it! Chemistry lesson of the day! When I was little, I used to think they were little packets of pretzel salt! :rolleyes:

silica gel is completely inert in the body when ingested. breathing powdered silica can lead to silicosis. usually only a problem in industrial, chronic exposures.

I just got home from schooll...
now i have another clas....s....yay!

(I feel like such a post whore when i get home b/c theres always new things to red)