FYI: How much caffeine would it take to kill you?
cA wrongful-death lawsuit filed last week against the makers of Monster energy drinks claims that 14-year-old Anais Fournier drank two 24-ounce cans of Monster in the day before she unexpectedly died late in 2011. The coroner's report described "caffeine toxicity" as contributing to her death. Just what does it take to ingest a lethal dose of caffeine? The answer is hard to pin down, in part because it happens so rarely, but it's clearly a hell of a lot. In an email, Jack James, the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Caffeine Research, says that overdose for adults requires roughly 10 grams of caffeine. (People typically ingest just 1 to 2 mg/kg of caffeine per beverage.) A 2005 Forensic Science International article on two fatal caffeine overdoses in New Mexico pegs the figure closer to about 5 grams--an amount that would still require drinking more than 6 gallons of McDonald's coffee. Whereas a normal cup of coffee might bring the concentration of caffeine in...