A TAPIOCA ball, also known as the “pearl” in “pearl milk tea,” was found in an 8-year-old boy’s lung after the boy suffered from pneumonia repeatedly over the past six months, the Daily Sunshine reported yesterday.

The boy, identified as Lin, has been diagnosed with pneumonia four times over the past six months. His mother, surnamed Zheng, brought him to the Shenzhen People’s Hospital late last month, when an X-ray showed that there was a tapioca ball in the inferior lobe of Lin’s right lung.

According to the report, the boy must have accidentally inhaled the tapioca ball into his airway when drinking a pearl milk tea.

The doctors extracted the tapioca ball from Lin’s lung after performing a fiberoptic bronchoscopy.

Chen Ting, a doctor at the hospital’s pediatric unit, said food can be digested in people’s digestive tracts, but the tapioca ball wasn’t digested because it slid into Lin’s airway. He said if the tapioca ball wasn’t removed, it might have cause severe lung injury to Lin’s bronchial wall and alveoli. (Zhang Yang, Zhi Dingli)