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3eb7988a1663 • today at 3:20 AM • 1 reply • view on HN

Taxine alkaloids[0]

  The estimated lethal dose (LDmin) of taxine alkaloids is approximately 3.0 mg/kg body weight for humans.[27][28] Different studies show different toxicities; a major reason is the difficulty of measuring taxine alkaloids.[29]
It goes on to say that rats are ~20mg/kg, which would put a human at somewhere less than 1.4grams.

Which is close enough to, "any exposure at all will kill".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxine_alkaloids

Replies

esperent • today at 5:10 AM

> Which is close enough to, "any exposure at all will kill".

How much is in one seed?

I could only find a few sources saying that you would need to eat about 50g of the needles to reach the LD, and that's... A lot. There's no way a child would accidentally manage that, for example (even assuming LD for a child is much lower). But I couldn't find specific numbers for seeds.

Not being a killjoy here, I grew up around yew trees and I was always told to be careful of them, but not with any sense of panic that would suggest "any exposure at all will kill”. I think you'd have a bad time even with low exposure but death seems unlikely by accident.

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