According to a recent exposé by Consumer Reports, many popular dietary supplements such as ginseng and Echinacea are much more dangerous than they may seem. Consumers often think natural or herbal supplements can do no harm, but there is significant evidence to the contrary. In addition to their inherent risks, many of the supplements are contaminated, the report says.

The potential danger from dietary supplements, which are virtually unregulated in the U.S., prompts product liability concerns about the effects of their active ingredients, the effects of contaminants, and the risk that consumers will replace scientifically tested medications with supplements.

“[C]onsumers are easily lulled into believing that supplements can do no harm because they’re ‘natural’,” said Nancy Metcalf, Consumer Reports senior program editor, in a statement.
“However, some natural ingredients can be hazardous, and on top of that the FDA has repeatedly found hazardous ingredients, including synthetic prescription drugs, in supplements.”

Herbal and Dietary Supplements Can Have Serious Health Repercussions
Many widely used supplements contain ingredients associated with:
• Cancer
• Stroke and high blood pressure
• Heart disease, arrhythmia and heart rhythm disorders
• Liver damage
• Kidney damage
A May report by the Government Accountability Office also found that some sellers of ginseng, Echinacea and other supplements have told consumers that their products can cure cancer, or that they can be used to replace prescription medicines. Making such claims is illegal.

The FDA has limited power to regulate these supplements — much less than it has to regulate prescription drugs. Its authority over alternative medicine is based on the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, which Consumer Reports describes as industry-friendly.
The influential group is critical of how the FDA uses what little power it has.

So far, the FDA has only banned one ingredient from dietary supplements: ephedrine alkaloids, which is also known as ma huang. Non-alkaloid Ephedra-containing dietary supplements such as bitter orange remain legal, although they have been associated with similar adverse effects.

Consumer Reports also points out that, despite setting up field offices in China in 2008, the FDA has never inspected a single dietary supplement factory there — which it routine does for factories abroad that produce medical or food products for the U.S.

Consumer Groups Call for FDA Authority to Regulate Dietary Supplements

“Of the more than 54,000 dietary supplement products in the Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database, only about a third have some level of safety and effectiveness that is supported by scientific evidence,” reads the Consumer Reports article.
Despite that, Americans flock to use them. The magazine cites a report in the Nutrition Business Journal saying that $26.7 billion in nutritional supplements were sold in the U.S. in 2009 alone.

The Consumer Reports piece calls on Congress to give the FDA more authority to regulate dietary supplements as well as to increase the agency’s clout overall. The call echoes appeals made earlier this year by experts at the Institute of Medicine and the Government Accountability Office.

Until dangerous dietary supplements are regulated, however, the only recourse an injured consumer may have is a product liability lawsuit — and it can be difficult to prove that a nutritional supplement caused an illness or injury.
Safety Tip: 12 Supplement Ingredients That Can Make You Seriously Ill

Along with some other organizations, Consumer Reports is calling attention to twelve ingredients in particular that are known to have adverse health effects. If you must take dietary supplements, write these down and make sure none of them is on the ingredient list:
• Aconite
• Bitter orange
• Chaparral
• Colloidal silver
• Coltsfoot
• Comfrey • Country mallow
• Germanium
• Greater celandine
• Kava
• Lobelia
• Yohimbe
Related Resources:
• “U.S. dietary supplements often contaminated report” (Reuters, August 3, 2010)
• “Ephedra” (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)