I'd read about this before but never found a follow up on it. Well looky this! I ran across this last night on the Wiki.
Safrole, also known as shikimol, is a phenylpropene. It is a colorless or slightly yellow oily liquid. It is typically extracted from the root-bark or the fruit of sassafras plants.
Safrole is regarded by the U.S. government to be a weak carcinogen in rats. It naturally occurs in a variety of spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, black pepper and herbs such as basil. In that role safrole is believed, although not proven, to make a small but measurable contribution to the overall incidence of human cancer, equal to the hazards presented by orange juice (due to limonene) and tomatoes (caffeic acid). In the United States, it was once widely used as a food additive in root beer, sassafras tea, and other common goods, but was banned by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) after its carcinogenicity in rats was discovered. Today, safrole is also banned for use in soap and perfumes by the International Fragrance Association.
Think about that next time you have a sasparilla.
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6 comments:
Great. Another of the wonderful things I remember from my childhood (boiling our own sassafras roots to make tea) is proven to be hazardous to your health. I think I'll just crawl back into bed and try to sleep it off...unless sleep is hazardous to my health, too.
My mom used to make sassafrass tea when I was a kid; I hated it. Glad I stayed away from sassafrass and its carcinogens and instead, took up smoking. Cheers Mike!!
Sassafras is kind of a bad ass.
B - More than 9 or 10 hours of sleep a day has been proven to shorten your life. Aren't you glad you asked?
MM - Not for long you're not.
J - Chemically created sassafras must be OK.
Is there anything that won't kill me?
K - I won't.... maybe.... if I haven't watched Dexter in the last day or two anyway.
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