Claim: Vitamin C users who eat shrimp risk death from arsenic poisoning.
Example:[Collected via e-mail, 2001]
F.Y.I.
Spread this message out to as many friends and families as possible, because this is a matter of life and death!!
I just read a medical report from my friend saying that: DO NOT eat shrimp (Prawn) if you have just taken VITAMIN C pills!! This will cause you to DIE in ARSENIC (As) toxication within HOURS!!
THIS IS NOT A JOKE!! There's been a case happened in Taiwan.
Take care!
Origins: This
e-mailed scare began circulating on the Internet in May 2001. Presumably it's trying to claim that prawns metabolize arsenic (as some aquatic organisms do), forming compounds ordinarily non-toxic to humans, but when the prawns are ingested in combination with Vitamin C, something in the vitamin prompts the re-estalishment of toxicity. Obviously, even if this were true, it only occurs under very specific or extraordinary circumstances, or we'd be finding plenty of accounts of healthy-but-dead seafood lovers.
Shrimp does not turn into arsenic when combined with Vitamin C tablets. Arsenic is a basic element, as listed on the periodic table of elements. It is not formed by combining any one thing with any other; it exists as is in the same way gold does. Just as there was no magical philosophers' stone that would enable its user to transform various worthless substances into gold, neither will the combination of shrimp and Vitamin C tablets produce arsenic.
In any case, we haven't turned up any "medical report" (received from the unnamed but authoritative-sounding "my friend" or not) that links shrimp and Vitamin C with arsenic "toxication." Likewise, we have found no news accounts of any death(s) occurring in Taiwan from this
combination.
What we have here is the usual unsigned e-mail of unknown origin promoting a dubious claim. What went through the head of the person who wrote this. Pure hoax? Something egregiously misheard then overreacted to? We don't know, but we do know nothing of less-than-dubious validity supports this one.
Barbara "arsenic and old plaice" Mikkelson
Last updated: 31 December 2005
The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/shrimp.asp
