Zero Deaths from Vitamins, Minerals, Amino Acids or Herbs:

Poison Control Statistics Prove Supplements’ Safety Yet Again

There was not even one death caused by a dietary supplement in 2009, according to the most recent information collected by the US National Poison Data System.

The new 200-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, herb, or dietary mineral supplement.

Two people died from nonnutritional mineral poisoning, one from a sodium salt and one from an iron salt or iron. On page 1139, the AAPCC report specifically indicates that the iron fatality was not from a nutritional supplement. One other person is alleged to have died from an “Unknown Dietary Supplement or Homeopathic Agent.” This claim remains speculative, as no verification information was provided.

60 poison centers provide coast-to-coast data for the US National Poison Data System, “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 US population takes daily nutritional supplements. Even if each of those people took only one single tablet daily, that makes 155,000,000 individual doses per day, for a total of nearly 57 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?

References

Bronstein AC, Spyker DA, Cantilena LR Jr, Green JL, Rumack BH, Giffin SL. 2009 Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers’ National Poison Data System (NPDS): 27th Annual Report. Clin Toxicol. 2010;48:979–1178. The full-text article is available for free download at: http://www.aapcc.org/dnn/Portals/0/2009%20AR.pdf.

The data mentioned above are found in Table 22B, journal pp. 1138–1148.

For Further Reading:

Download any Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers from 1983 to 2009 free of charge at: http://www.aapcc.org/dnn/NPDSPoisonData/NPDSAnnualReports.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 nonprofit and noncommercial informational resource.

Editorial Review Board

Ian Brighthope, MD (Australia)
Ralph K. Campbell, MD (US)
Carolyn Dean, MD, ND (Canada)
Damien Downing, MD (UK)
Michael Ellis, MD (Australia)
Michael Gonzalez, DSc, PhD (Puerto Rico)
Steve Hickey, PhD (UK)
James A. Jackson, PhD (US)
Bo H. Jonsson, MD, PhD (Sweden)
Thomas Levy, MD, JD (US)
Jorge R. Miranda-Massari, PharmD (Puerto Rico)
Erik Paterson, MD (Canada)
Gert E. Shuitemaker, PhD (Netherlands)
Jagan Nathan Vamanan, MD (India)

Andrew W. Saul, PhD (US), editor and contact person: omns@orthomolecular.org