14 yeard old girl dies drinking Monster energy drinks

[eyeeatingfish]

A wrongful death lawsuit against Monster Beverage Corp., and the release of Food and Drug Administration incident reports indicating that Monster Energy drinks might have been responsible for five deaths since 2009, have brought questions about death by caffeine back into the national spotlight.

Although death by caffeine is possible, it generally takes 5 to 10 grams of the stimulant to kill someone, toxicologists say. Anais Fournier, the 14-year-old Maryland girl at the heart of the lawsuit, whose parents allege the energy drinks caused her death, consumed 480 mg of caffeine over two days, or less than a gram of the stimulant.

Fournier drank two 24-ounce cans of Monster Energy during two consecutive day trips to the mall last December, before going into cardiac arrest at her home on Dec. 17, according to the criminal complaint filed in California Superior Court last week. She never regained consciousness and was taken off life support two days before Christmas.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/monster...ry?id=17547689

It is sad this girl died but it wasn't very smart to drink two large cans of Monster. The large can is 24oz and is actually 3 or 4 servings in one can.
I don't think the incident warrants a lawsuit though. Monster already puts warnings on their cans as to the caffine content and it seems that this teenager already had an underlying heart condition that likely contributed to her death.
Plus Monster has sold about 8 billion energy drinks over its history with maybe 1 death? Thats a pretty low chance of dying from an energy drink.

[Triton]

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/monster...ry?id=17547689

It is sad this girl died but it wasn't very smart to drink two large cans of Monster. The large can is 24oz and is actually 3 or 4 servings in one can.
I don't think the incident warrants a lawsuit though. Monster already puts warnings on their cans as to the caffine content and it seems that this teenager already had an underlying heart condition that likely contributed to her death.
Plus Monster has sold about 8 billion energy drinks over its history with maybe 1 death? Thats a pretty low chance of dying from an energy drink.

I have to agree with you. Are manufacturers responsible every time adolescents do stupid things? Should producers of cinnamon be sued because some kid chokes to death by taking the cinnomon challenge? How about milk distributors when some college kid tries to drink a gallon of milk on a bet? Heck if you drink enough water it can kill you, should we start suing the city water department?

[jop91]

A 0.5l can is too much for me. ( nervousness, sweating, pretty unpleasant). She had 2 0.7l in less than 24 hours?, with a hearth condition.

[Insipid Moniker]

Everything is poisonous, the only thing that varies is the lethal dose. Energy drinks are really pretty bad for you, but I don't think that justifies a lawsuit or ban.

[jop91]

Everything is poisonous, the only thing that varies is the lethal dose.

That's what a lot of people don't seem to realize...

[thenextarcher]

sounds to me like the girl had a heart condition and it was triggered by her drinking caffeine or whatever.. If anything i would link it to taurine.

[JSMcustoms]

sounds to me like the girl had a heart condition and it was triggered by her drinking caffeine or whatever.. If anything i would link it to taurine.

I agree with you. While caffine normally takes 5 to 10 grams to kill a person taurine takes only 2. Far more toxic and there for more likely to be the cause of this.

[JSMcustoms]

Sorry for the double post. Some sort of glitch...

[MunroClansman]

Yeah, I don't get the caffeine thing. Drip coffee has an average of about double the amount of caffeine per ounce, so drinking a few cups of that in the morning puts you well over what you'd get from two cans of Monster.

As others have said, I think taurine or some pre-existing condition was a far more likely cause.

[hoxhunbe]

480 mg over two days? That's two average-sized coffees. That's nothing.

This case is undoubtedly the result of some underlying, undiagnosed condition (exacerbated by caffeine or taurine to a very mild degree at most). Plus, I doubt it's the first time this girl had consumed this much caffeine or even drank a couple cans of Monster. It is not uncommon for adults to consume 500 - 1000 mg of caffeine in a day. I personally have done this on several occasions, and while it can make you feel pretty nauseous, death is an extreme reaction. I have gym buddies who will down 500+ mg right before a strenuous workout to no ill effect.

This lawsuit will be settled so public exposure subsides, but it's unfortunate it even made it to this stage. This is a tragic event for the family, but it is absolutely not the fault of Monster or any other energy supplement company. Sometimes, there really is nobody to blame.

[eyeeatingfish]

I agree with you. While caffine normally takes 5 to 10 grams to kill a person taurine takes only 2. Far more toxic and there for more likely to be the cause of this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taurine

A 2003 study by the European Food Safety Authority found no adverse effects for up to 1,000 mg of taurine per kilogram of body weight per day.[15]
A review published in 2008 found no documented reports of negative or positive health effects associated with the amount of taurine used in energy drinks, concluding that "The amounts of guarana, taurine, and ginseng found in popular energy drinks are far below the amounts expected to deliver either therapeutic benefits or adverse events"

[apintandafight]

Some people (children included) are more susceptible to caffeine than others, but I have on occasion drank 3 or 4 monsters over the course of a day if I am working doubles. But then again, I am a 250 lb man and not a 14 year old girl. It is sad that this happened though.

[Christian]

So, my question is this- why did her parents let her have these energy drinks in the first place?

[kimberfan]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taurine

A 2003 study by the European Food Safety Authority found no adverse effects for up to 1,000 mg of taurine per kilogram of body weight per day.[15]
A review published in 2008 found no documented reports of negative or positive health effects associated with the amount of taurine used in energy drinks, concluding that "The amounts of guarana, taurine, and ginseng found in popular energy drinks are far below the amounts expected to deliver either therapeutic benefits or adverse events"

i take 2000mg of taurine for heart health a couple times a week and also up to 1000mg of magnesium (PVC's are a pain when they flare up so i like to keep them in check) i also take hawthorn and motherwort which arent FDA approved, i've been doing this for 2 years with no side effects but a ton of benefits so i'm pretty sure taurine is safe.

[Bigfattyt]

She had a heart defect.

That is like me eating 20 big macks a day for 10 years, and then eating a huge burrito and having a heart attack. The burrito did not kill me. The underlying 10 years of cholesterol, plaque, hypertension, extra 200 lbs over working my heart did.


The caffeine poisoning level for an adult male would be something like 60-70 cans of monster all consumed at the same time (according to medical experts on the news story).

A can has 160mg of caffeine. A 7 ounce cup of drip coffee has 115-175mg. So those two energy drinks had the same caffeine as two 7 ounce cups of normal home made coffee.


I once downed 28 cans of Mountain Dew in a pop drinking contest as a kid (about 16 years old). Literally no effect besides ruining that drink for me, and really really having to pee after sleeping for 8 hours. Millions of kids drink 4-6 of those Pee flavored Caffeine Pee per day. Literally millions of kids.

According to a lethal dose calculator, if she weighed 100 lbs it would take 42.66 cans to reach the lethal dose. 34.12 if she weighed only 80 lbs.


(supposedly it would take 149.30 cans to kill some one my size).


There was some other underlying medical cause for her death, and I am sure that caffeine was just a trigger.

I have to agree with you. Are manufacturers responsible every time adolescents do stupid things? Should producers of cinnamon be sued because some kid chokes to death by taking the cinnomon challenge? How about milk distributors when some college kid tries to drink a gallon of milk on a bet? Heck if you drink enough water it can kill you, should we start suing the city water department?

I have successfully done the milk challenge. 1 gallon in about 20 minutes. The milk was 1 percent and room temperature. I had it with doughnuts.

I had to lay down for about and hour to keep it down, and I had horrendous diarrhea afterwards. I was 18 at the time.

I tried again when I was about 25 years old. I made it to about 10 ounces left. I had already eaten several dougnuts during the challenge, and had eaten movie popcorn, and a 44 ounce soda about an hour earlier.

That time, in addition to the milk and doughnuts, I had run up and down 4 steps and lean over a cross bar to put a part on a machine every 6 minutes (I was working at a factory). I likely would have made the challenge again, if not for leaning over that bar every few minutes. The vomit from that one was amazing, and it was full of doughnuts, milk, and buttery popcorn. Luckily we were ready with a 55 gallon drum. My co workers still laugh about it today, every time we run into each other.

The milk challenge is better than the hot sauce challenge I did, or the guacamole eating bet, or even a drop of the hottest hot sauce I tasted to be macho (that one almost killed me, I swear I could feel my heart beat throbbing in the nerves in my teeth!).


People do stupid stuff. People die from random weird and stupid stuff.

Two cups of coffee (the equivalent of the two energy drinks) in 24 hours is not responsible for this girls death.

[C_Becker]

Tragic for the parents, but 2 cans in 24h definitely don't kill you, if you don't have other medical issues.
Most I had was a 1,5l bottle in one night, sleeping wasn't easy after that LOL
I try to cut back on the stuff, but since I don't drink coffee, I need something to keep me awake in evening school

[pialia]

This is a case of bad parenting. Nothing else.

Nobody is under the impression that energy drinks are healthy. Just like nobody is under the impression that drinking a liter and a half of vodka in 24 hours will benefit your well-being. Then again, it's pretty hard for a 14 year old to get their hands on vodka(at least when I was 14...) maybe it should be the same for 0.7l cans of energy drinks? I've never met a 14 year old that needed a pick-me-up. I was too busy doing stuff to think of drinking something to wake me up when I was 14.

I have a friend whose diet mainly consists of energy drinks, probably 50-75% of his daily caloric intake and I frequently come across the term "choose your poison." Why is there a need for a poison in the first place?

[timcsaw]

Ban it.... for the children.

[eyeeatingfish]

A can has 160mg of caffeine. A 7 ounce cup of drip coffee has 115-175mg. So those two energy drinks had the same caffeine as two 7 ounce cups of normal home made coffee.

A serving has that much caffeine not the whole can. One 16oz can is 2 servings so its more like 4-5 cups of coffee.
Add to this that Guarana is also a natural source of caffeine.

These energy drinks are not that comparable to your standard cup of coffee

[RobCamlin]

Everything is a poison in the right doses, and the only winner in a lawsuit is the lawyer. The warnings on the cans are adequate enough, if a consumer chooses to ignore them then I believe that they assume all responsibility for what may occur as a result.