Woman Dies After Drinking Poisonous Herbal Tea

CNN..Still Real News

A woman died after consuming poisonous herbal tea purchased in San Francisco's Chinatown, public health officials there announced Monday. They're urging people to throw away tea purchased from Sun Wing Wo Trading Company.

In a separate incident, a man became ill after consuming tea made from a different blend of leaves purchased at the same San Francisco herbalist. The public health department announced that he recovered and was released from the hospital on March 12

A lab test found aconite, a plant-based toxin, in the patients and the tea samples taken from the trading company. Public health officials removed the tea products consumed by the patients from the shelves of the store and are tracing the sources of contamination.

Aconite is also known as

monkshood, helmet flower, wolf's bane, Chuan Wu, Cao Wu and fuzi.

But raw aconite is toxic.

I love homeopathic remedies and teas, and I know many ATS members do as well.

Check your cupboards. Especially for teas from china that note aconite of any kind.

Do you know if some were "shipped" beyond San Fran?

I usually drink tea, nothing listed. But this really brings to mind the kinds of things we take for granted and consume.

I remember that huge mad cow disease deal with Jacks crack back in the day.

originally posted by: Arnie123
Do you know if some were "shipped" beyond San Fran?

I usually drink tea, nothing listed. But this really brings to mind the kinds of things we take for granted and consume.

I remember that huge mad cow disease deal with Jacks crack back in the day.

They are searching for the source company, which is China. So it was shipped to other places than just that store or city.

Sounds like a job for Dexter. Monkshood doesn't belong in any herbalist kit. Out behind Hanna's orchid hut, perfect fit.

originally posted by: IgnoranceIsntBlisss
Sounds like a job for Dexter. Monkshood doesn't belong in any herbalist kit. Out behind Hanna's orchid hut, perfect fit.

Monkshood is the same as Aconite and when processed correctly, it is apparently fine. But there is a source out there that is not. I alert people because many Chinese companies are wholesalers and would have shipped this all over. So, better safe than sorry and remove any teas with these ingredients in them- or this ingredient, I mean, as it has many names.

a reply to: reldra

This is terrible. Good find.

S+F

a reply to: reldra

The roots of A. ferox supply the Nepalese poison called bikh, bish, or nabee. It contains large quantities of the alkaloid pseudaconitine, which is a deadly poison. A. palmatum yields another of the bikh poisons. The root of A. luridum, of the Himalaya, is said to be as poisonous as that of A. ferox or A. napellus.[3]

Several species of Aconitum have been used as arrow poisons. The Minaro in Ladakh use A. napellus on their arrows to hunt ibex, while the Ainu in Japan used a species of Aconitum to hunt bear.[9] The Chinese also used Aconitum poisons both for hunting[10] and for warfare.[11] Aconitum poisons were used by the Aleuts of Alaska's Aleutian Islands for hunting whales. Usually, one man in a kayak armed with a poison-tipped lance would hunt the whale, paralyzing it with the poison and causing it to drown.[12]
en.wikipedia.org...

It does have some uses:
www.webmd.com...

But this is advanced level stuff. Think Jimsonweed / Scopalamine level danger and potency.

This isn't stuff that should be in tea kits, bags, etc. It shouldn't be mixed in with leaves on the supply side. It shouldn't be measured lacking a milligram scale.

David "Avacado" Wolfe strikes again!?

I am wary of physically consuming anything coming from China. Their quality control and governmental oversight is slim to none. Every month or two there are widespread poisonings occurring in China based on tainted food products, etc.. I won't do it.

On an alternative note, a few years ago my wife was using an herbal detox from China. It turned her into a nymphomaniac for about 6 months. After researching the ingredients, we believe it was something called fox root, if I remember correctly, that made the change. (It was a pleasant, if not tiring, six months.)

a reply to: TobyFlenderson

You better stop consuming vitamins / supplements / generic pharmies etc then. They 'all' come from China.

a reply to: reldra



As a tea drinker, that's scary. Thanks for the info.

a reply to: DBCowboy

This doesnt sound like a case of ordinary stuff like you'd get all mfg'd in convenient little tea bags. This would be one of those specialty shops with the hundreds of jars on the walls with odd stuff like "powdered deer penis". Maybe the poor old Chinese guy is just going blind. So many things that could have gone wrong here. Oh, and maybe just maybe it'd make for a good episode of Dexter.

a reply to: IgnoranceIsntBlisss

I buy esoteric teas. Well, I used to. . . . .

Always best to research things especially anything one is going to be putting into ones body...

Aconite Dosage

Extreme caution is required. Fresh aconite is extremely toxic, and safe dosage is dependent on processing. Many species are used medicinally in China after processing. Traditional Western texts recommended 60 mg of the root per dose. Pure aconite 2 mg or aconite plant 1 g may cause death.

Note: The weight of a US nickle weighs 5 grams.

Best to leave such alone; especially when there are much safer herbs affording the same effects or aleviations out there.

Saw a mention about homeopathics in this thread. Homeopathic remedies have NONE of the physical herb substance. There is NO homeopathic herb tea.
If you choose to use homeopathics, study up on what you need first. Then only go to a company with a good rep and many years in the biz: Hyland's, Boericke and Tafel, 188 homeopathy (Luyties). The best and easiest homeopathic remedy to try is Oscillococcinum for the flu. If you are curious, try that when you have a sudden onset respiratory illness.

This poor woman (RIP) drank an herb tea with a poisonous herb in it.
I drink herb teas. I only use USA herb teas from USA companies; Celestial Seasonings, Alvita, Hannah Kroeger, and Traditional Medicinals. I grow my own herbs as well.
If I try a tea and don't like it, I stop using it.

Read, study.

a reply to: reldra

An interesting background too, Monkshood is.

It was used by the aboriginal peoples of the Kamchatka peninsula, Kurile, Kodiak and Aleutian islands in the far north Pacific Ocean to poison whales. They would row out in small boats and get close enough to a whale to stab it with a short harpoon. The shaft would be broken off leaving the poisoned head imbedded and the hope was that the dead whale would wash up on shore a couple of days later. The harpoon heads were carved with a 'signature' of the individual whalers so that the washed up whales could be properly attributed.

Details are limited as the use of the poison was kept a close secret. The ability to kill whales gave the hunter great status in the community and a dead whaler would often be rendered down so that his body fat could be applied to the harpoon heads to pass his skills onto his successor.

It was used to poison arrows in ancient China but not just the tips. The shafts would be smeared with a paste made from the plant in the hope that anyone attempting to remove an arrow from a wounded soldier would absorb the poison.

I have it on my property because the deer don't eat it and it's pretty. But it can certainly be used as a toxin. It has magical uses in the witch community... supposedly it was part of their flying potion or whatever.

Sad to see that it ended up in a blended tea from China. I seem to remember not a long time ago there was a ban/recall on a certain dog food from China that they used Glycol as a sweetener in.

If you can't grow American, at least try to buy American. As another poster suggested, wish you luck on that if you take supplements though.

Someone at the place they put that together in China sure messed up. I wonder how big of a screw up it was? It could be hundreds of contaminated pounds shipped all over the country. In those big processing plants they could have a big drum of the stuff that was mixed in incorrectly. They probably all got shipped to a central distributor or maybe the store ordered it direct. It could be anywhere in the world.

Most people effected by this mess up won't even know what caused it, they will get sick and nobody will expect tea as the problem.

originally posted by: katfish The best and easiest homeopathic remedy to try is Oscillococcinum for the flu.

I believe this is true.
No flu shots and no flu in family after discovering Oscillococcinum.

As someone in the bay area, let the anxiety disorder fueled fear that some tiny particle will end up on or in me now by happenstance even though I don't drink herbal tea, begin! (Or that it'll somehow end up on the licorice root I buy.)

Seriously though, good cautionary story. Be safe, all.

Peace.

originally posted by: reldra
CNN..Still Real News

A woman died after consuming poisonous herbal tea purchased in San Francisco's Chinatown, public health officials there announced Monday. They're urging people to throw away tea purchased from Sun Wing Wo Trading Company.

In a separate incident, a man became ill after consuming tea made from a different blend of leaves purchased at the same San Francisco herbalist. The public health department announced that he recovered and was released from the hospital on March 12

A lab test found aconite, a plant-based toxin, in the patients and the tea samples taken from the trading company. Public health officials removed the tea products consumed by the patients from the shelves of the store and are tracing the sources of contamination.

Aconite is also known as

monkshood, helmet flower, wolf's bane, Chuan Wu, Cao Wu and fuzi.

But raw aconite is toxic.

I love homeopathic remedies and teas, and I know many ATS members do as well.

Check your cupboards. Especially for teas from china that note aconite of any kind.

Plants' defense mechanisms often include toxins. Some plants fix things so that an animal only gets to eat them once. People wander about picking leaves in the woods and brew them into teas. It is easy to make mistakes and trusting people half a world away to not make mistakes is unwise. Stick with Barry's Irish Breakfast Tea and don't worry about cardiac glycosides, alkaloids, and nasty phenolics.