Researchers Question the Safety of Herbal Supplements

The World Health Organization has estimated that up to 80 percent of the world’s population supplements dietary needs through plant-based medicines, including substances such as St. John’s Wort and Echinacea. Since these “medicines” are not regulated by governmental agencies, they are not required to adhere to the same standards as food and drug manufacturers.

A team of researchers led by Jinesh C. Jain, the manager of the University’s Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) facility, has raised some important questions about the pesticides used in the harvesting and processing of herbal supplements from medicinal plants. Using the ICP-MS and Gas-Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry facilities at the University, they found that a variety of dietary supplements contained one or more heavy metals in surprisingly high concentrations. They also identified traces of n-hexadecanoic acid and octadecanoic acid, which are eye, respiratory, and skin irritants.

The team included Jain; Clive R. Neal, associate professor of civil engineering and geological sciences; Jeffrey W. Talley, assistant professor of civil engineering and geological sciences; Xiangru Zhang, a graduate student in the department; and Matt Padberg, an undergraduate.

Jain received the Plaque of Honor for this study at the International Symposium for Recent Advances in Pharmacology earlier this year in New Delhi, India. He is currently collaborating with Praveen K. Saxena, a professor of plant biology at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, to develop new technologies to provide toxin-free standardized medicinal plant materials.

http://www.nd.edu/~cegeos/people/faculty/jain.htm

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