No Deaths from Vitamins, Minerals, Amino Acids
or Herbs
Poison Control Statistics Prove Supplements’ Safety
(OMNS, January 19, 2010) There was not even one death
caused by a dietary supplement in 2008, according to the most recent information
collected by the U.S. National Poison Data System. The new 174-page annual
report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers, published
in the journal Clinical Toxicology, shows zero deaths from multiple vitamins;
zero deaths from any of the B vitamins; zero deaths from vitamins A, C,
D, or E; and zero deaths from any other vitamin.
Additionally, there were no deaths whatsoever from
any amino acid or herbal product. This means no deaths at all from blue
cohosh, echinacea, ginkgo biloba, ginseng, kava kava, St. John’s wort
, valerian, yohimbe, Asian medicines, ayurvedic medicines, or any other
botanical. There were zero deaths from creatine, blue-green algae, glucosamine,
chondroitin, melatonin, or any homeopathic remedies.
Furthermore, there were zero deaths in 2008 from any
dietary mineral supplement. This means there were no fatalities from calcium,
magnesium, chromium, zinc, colloidal silver, selenium, iron, or multi-mineral
supplements. Two children died as a result of medical use of the antacid
sodium bicarbonate. The other “Electrolyte and Mineral” category death
was due to a man accidentally drinking sodium hydroxide, a highly toxic
degreaser and drain-opener.
No man, woman or child died from nutritional supplements. Period.
61 poison centers provide coast-to-coast data for the
U.S. National Poison Data System, which is then reviewed by 29 medical
and clinical toxicologists. NPDS, the authors write, is “one of the
few real-time national surveillance systems in existence, providing a
model public health surveillance system for all types of exposures, public
health event identification, resilience response and situational awareness
tracking.”
Over half of the U.S. population takes daily nutritional
supplements. Even if each of those people took only one single tablet
daily, that makes 154,000,000 individual doses per day, for a total of
over 56 billion doses annually. Since many persons take more than just
one vitamin or mineral tablet, actual consumption is considerably higher,
and the safety of nutritional supplements is all the more remarkable.
If nutritional supplements are allegedly so “dangerous,”
as the FDA and news media so often claim, then where are the bodies?
Those who wonder if the media are biased against vitamins
may consider this: how many television stations, newspapers, magazines,
and medical journals have reported that no one dies from nutritional supplements?
Reference:
Bronstein AC, Spyker DA, Cantilena LR Jr, Green JL, Rumack BH, Giffin
SL. 2008 Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers’
National Poison Data System (NPDS): 26th Annual Report. Clinical Toxicology
(2009). 47, 911-1084. The full text article is available for free download
at http://www.aapcc.org/dnn/Portals/0/2008annualreport.pdf
. Vitamins statistics are found in Table 22B, journal pages 1052-3. Minerals,
herbs, amino acids and other supplements are in the same table, pages
1047-8.
For Further Reading:
Download any Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control
Centers from 1983-2008 free of charge at http://www.aapcc.org/dnn/NPDSPoisonData/AnnualReports/tabid/125/Default.aspx
Nutritional Medicine is Orthomolecular Medicine
Orthomolecular medicine uses safe, effective nutritional therapy to fight
illness. For more information:
http://www.orthomolecular.org
The peer-reviewed Orthomolecular Medicine News Service is a non-profit
and non-commercial informational resource.
Editorial Review Board:
Carolyn Dean, M.D., N.D.
Damien Downing, M.D.
Michael Gonzalez, D.Sc., Ph.D.
Steve Hickey, Ph.D.
James A. Jackson, PhD
Bo H. Jonsson, MD, Ph.D
Thomas Levy, M.D., J.D.
Jorge R. Miranda-Massari, Pharm.D.
Erik Paterson, M.D.
Gert E. Shuitemaker, Ph.D.
Andrew W. Saul, Ph.D., Editor and contact person. Email: omns@orthomolecular.org
