What poisonous thing could the child have eaten off the wall that he mistook for white cotton candy?

mould?

Asbestos is white furry appearance, like this .
But it causes lung cancer not a poison, lead in paint can be white but not like cotton candy.

Do you have a link to the article?

The only cotton-like substance that comes to my mind is fiberglass. That’s pretty nasty, and I’m guessing it would make anyone sick if they ate it.

So, it could be white mold or Asbestos. Okay. I’ve always seen images of asbestos as pink or something similar. I don’t know why I thought of Asbestos.
@Tropical_Willie Thanks for the link.

@Dutchess_III I don’t have an article. I’m trying to track it down.

@snowberry Can it come out of the wall like weed comes out of cracks in driveways?

Mold could, I’m thinking, because it grows.

What article? Who determined that the child was poisoned? Where did this happen?

@Dutchess_III Of course what was I thinking, fiberglass and asbestos don’t grow.

Insulation?

Or maybe the article said he breathed it in, I don’t know. I wish I can find the article. I don’t even have where it happened, @syz
@Judi Insulation doesn’t grow though as @Dutchess_III pointed out.

@flo It could be pulled out, but it sounds like whatever it was, you think it grew. If it grew, it might have been some sort of fungus. I searched on Google Images for white fungus in wall and got these images. In one of them it appears the fungus actually caused the wall to burst open.
https://www.google.com/search?q=white+fungus+inside+wall&biw=1386&bih=793&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=RAOXVduWAZb-yQTZxIK4Cg&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ

It’s efflorescence: http://www.concreteconstruction.net/concrete-construction/the-white-stuff.aspx

Is this the article/blog?

Pink Panther Fiberglass isolation.

How about white paints with lead? I remember reading an article from long ago saying that certain kinds of paints with lead were really sweet, and the children could take pieces of them out from the walls and eat them thinking they were some kind of candies.

@Mimishu1995 Good answer, but cotton candy doesn’t look like that. It looks like fiberglass insulation, which is made of long clear or pinkish threads of fiberglass. https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.basspirate.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2011%2F11%2FRaviParikh-CottonCandy.jpg&f=1

PS, what were his symptoms?

There is on dry wall joints, a plasterish twine tape that could fray off.

But that wouldn’t make him sick. Neither would construction mud, in small amounts.

A moth cocoon.

^^^^ and that.

@Pied_Pfeffer That could be the article, I’m not sure. Thank you.

@Dutchess_III I don’t know the symptoms.
@snowberry I’m getting error message for the link b the way.

@flo OK. Look for images of cotton candy and images of fiberglass. They look pretty much the same, except for color. Both can come in white.

Okay @snowberry
But the thing is it was supposedly something that was growing, I think.

Or gave the appearance of growing, such as a bit of fiberglass sticking out of a crack would if it wasn’t there before. Wish we could see the article.