people call poison control centers in the U.S. every 24 minutes due to dietary supplement exposures – 275,000 calls from 2000 to 2012. The research, from Nationwide Children's Hospital's Center for Injury Research and Policy and Central Ohio Poison Center, was published Monday in the
Journal of Medical Toxicology .
The rate of calls has fluctuated over the years. Between 2000 and 2002, the rate increased 46.1 percent before dipping 8.8 percent between 2002 to 2005. Calls spiked 49.3 percent between 2005 and 2012. The 2002 to 2005 decrease probably resulted from the Food and Drug Administration's ban on ma huang, a botanical supplement that existed in certain supplements.
Breaking it down further: 70 percent of these calls involved children younger than 6 years old, though most of these cases were inadvertent. Only 4.5 percent of these exposures resulted in a serious medical outcome, and 95 percent of the most serious outcomes were in children 6 years and up.