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A beautiful, concise post by the nattily-titled new blogger, Angry Toxicologist, over at ScienceBlogs. He pokes a hole in the lazy assumption that anything "natural" is automatically safe, whereas "chemicals" (which has somehow become a catch-all for anything man-made) are universally bad.
He cites a study in Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety that looked at the safety data for two herbal supplements: St. John's wort (SJW) and echinacea (above).
Our angry toxicologist points out that both supplements are bioactive - St John's wort is known to interfere with prescription drugs, for example. He (I'll assume it's a he but please correct me if I'm wrong, Prof Toxocologist) also talks about the comparative adverse responses of the herbal supplements in children and adults:
What interests me here is that the percentage of young people experiencing adverse effects was lower than the adults (For Echinacea: 3.4 vs 28.9%; For SJW 14.4 vs 46.4%). Possibilities: 1) Since children's exposures were largely accidental, they took very little compared to the intentional adult exposure. 2) Children who ingest any supplement are more likely to be reported whether they have symptoms or not while adults are more likely to reported only if they take too much or experience adverse effects. 3) Children are less sensitive to Echinacea and SJW (not likely base on current evidence).
But the clear highlight is the mini-rant as he signs off:
So, I know it's legal and natural* but it's not safe; that goes double if you've got kids in the house. Oh, and shouldn't GNC et al. put their snake oil into child safe bottles? Not that they really care about anyone's health anyway, but it's nice to dream.*I don't consider it natural as it's extracted and processed. It's like saying digoxin is natural becuase of foxglove; or gasoline because of crude oil.
Hear hear.
