answer:Welcome to Fluther. Though not a medical professional (and even a medical professional would insist on an in-person exam before making a diagnosis), I’m still going to say “No, this is not a problem.” In sixty years of working, playing and eating around the world I would hate to guess at how much “stuff”, from water, dirt, smoke, dust, insects, food and other foreign matter I have aspirated and wish that I hadn’t. That includes smoke and fumes from all kinds of construction activities, illegal fumes that we won’t even talk about, and chemicals of various sorts. As you have noted in this case, there will be a certain amount of discomfort or irritation while your body adjusts to the irritant and works on absorbing and/or dispelling it. I wouldn’t say that “anything goes”. There are some things that you might want to have a doctor examine you for, to see if it can be recovered without causing additional injury. Things such as metals, poisonous substances, solids that won’t dissolve and the like can also become lodged in the tissues of the lung, and if the lung can’t manage to expel them, then they will become encapsulated (in the same way that asbestos and other insoluble fibers can be) where they can cause problems later in life. Since aspirin is intended to be swallowed anyway and is nontoxic, it will dissolve over time and be absorbed. You’ll be fine. I suppose if the irritation persists beyond a day or two, a doctor may be able to prescribe something to treat the irritation, but there would be a lot more chance of damage to throat tissues, your larynx and the lung itself by attempting to recover something that’s going to go away on its own soon enough. (He may even suggest that you take… more aspirin, the right way.)