60 cups of coffee can kill you!

After reading my friend Hammett's article on benefits of coffee, I found it biased on the Coffee pro side. Even though i love coffee i thought it is good to shed some light on it's darker side. We need to be aware of Caffeine's lethal dose.

LD50 (Lethal Dose) of Caffeine is 192mg/Kg. To put is simply this amount of Caffeine have killed rats and other animals when tested.

To make it even easier for readers to grab this, I calculated how many cups it would need to kill a person. So you can keep this in mind next time you call a friend for a 'coffee'. An average guy (60 Kg) would need 60 cups (150mg per cup) of coffee to kill himself! Some Espresso's have even higher amounts of Caffeine.

Caffeine is lethal and larger doses of coffee can cause arrhythmia, tachycardia, vomiting, convulsions, coma and death.

Lets look at some statistics.

• Two cases on Forensic Sci Int, 2005 reported to have killed 39 yr old female and a 29 yr old male. The found dead and the other died in hospital.
• Forensic Sci Int, 2004 reported 4 cases of a 54 yr old male, a 31 yr old male, a 21 yr old male and a 47 yr old female.
• An article on J Anal Toxicol reports 5 cases in 1985.
• Forensic Sci 1980 reported death of a 19 yr old girl from caffeine overdose.
• A 1987 article reports of a 2 yr old girls death in emergency care from caffeine overdose.
• Vet Hum Toxicol. 1989 reports a death of a 22 yr old girl from caffeine overdose which also says that it was the highest reported blood level of 1,560 mg/L of caffeine.

Also there are more non fatal reports of caffeine overdose cases. This does not mean that coffee doesn't benefit your health. Unless you are a heavy consumer of coffee, you don't need to be concerned. But Hammette.. yes you.. i think you have to consider this before your next cup of double espresso.