foreign material
Substance not belonging
Foreign material is any substance that doesn't belong where it's found—contaminants in food, debris in a wound, particles in machinery.
The term appears frequently in manufacturing, medicine, and quality control: The X-ray revealed foreign material in the patient's abdomen.
In legal and regulatory contexts, foreign material often triggers recalls or investigations: The batch was rejected due to foreign material contamination.
- contaminantSubstance that pollutes
- debrisScattered broken fragments
- impuritySubstance degrading another's quality
- particleMinute piece of matter
- dustFine settled particles
splinter · wood chip · residue · intrusion · alien · substance · lodged · embedded · contamination · food contamination · speck · fiber · grit · fragment · object · glass shard · unwanted · invasive
foreign, material, foreigner, foreignness, materiel, materials, materialism, materialist, materialistic