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No Deaths from Vitamins
Home
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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 multimineral 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
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
To Subscribe at no charge: http://www.orthomolecular.org/subscribe.html
Andrew Saul is the author of the books FIRE YOUR DOCTOR! How to be Independently
Healthy (reader reviews at http://www.doctoryourself.com/review.html
) and DOCTOR YOURSELF: Natural Healing
that Works. (reviewed at http://www.doctoryourself.com/saulbooks.html
)
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