No Deaths from Vitamins, Minerals, Amino Acids or Herbs Poison Control Statistic

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, January 19, 2010

 

 

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_

(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_

(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_

(http://www.orthomolecular.org)

 

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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.

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