Four New Hampshire daycare employees allegedly spiked children’s food with the sleep supplement melatonin and were arrested on Thursday.
After a six-month investigation, police discovered that children had been furtively dosed with melatonin. Officers arrested the daycare owner, 52-year-old Sally Dreckmann, along with three of her employees: Traci Innie, 51; Kaitlin Filardo and Jessica Foster, who are both 23.
Melatonin is a sleep aid supplement that is sold over the counter. But the long-term impacts of melatonin on children are not widely known.
Furthermore, there have been several reports of children being overdosed with melatonin in recent years. About 7% of emergency department visits between 2012 and 2021 were for children who had accidentally ingested melatonin, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported.
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine issued a health warning for melatonin use around kids and adolescents, warning against the lack of US Food and Drug Administration oversight for the sleep aid.
Those emergency room visits referenced were almost certainly not necessary and just the result of overly fussy parents (addendum: excluding weird allergic or idiosyncratic reactions to dyes and whatnot). It’ll do really weird things to you circadian rhythm and you’ll have some utterly surreal nightmares, but that’s not anything you can’t manage at home. It’s suuuch a light sleep aid it’s not going to sedate enough to mess with the drive to breathe and your body won’t convert enough of it to serotonin to do that either. It doesn’t really matter how much you take either.
The LD50 (average amount it takes to kill) is over a whole gram per kilogram of body weight in rodents and is basically unestablished in humans. That’s an insanely large amount as far as medication dosing goes, especially since we’re talking by kilogram of body weight. The max established safe dose (no nightmares) that melatonin is routinely sold as is like 10mg total for an adult, so the person would probably need to swallow an entire 100-count bottle for every kilo they weigh. Also I almost guarantee any pediatric overdoses were the gummies (obviously), so they would have to eat a 100-count bottle of the highest dose gummies for each kg. Babies don’t even start eating solid food until around 6 months when they’ll probably weigh around 6kg, so picture an infant getting open and chugging down a half-dozen 100 count bottles. It’s a nonsensical picture.
The daycare workers should still be fired asf though that’s super weird and yeah those kids should be getting regular checkups to make sure this hasn’t messed with their growth or anything.
You’re discounting possible allergic reactions.
True!
Should daycare workers be jailed for feeding kids foods containing soy?
Sorry… you’re comparing soy to melatonin? Also, this was about why kids would be hospitalized, not what people should be jailed for.
You’re responding to an explanation on how melatonin isnt a medical emergency. How all that stuff doesnt matter because what if theyre allergic. Melatonin is a hormone naturally produced in our bodies, allergic reactions to melatonin supplements are very rare. Soy is a far more common allergy.
Is soy a hormone naturally produced in our bodies?
Im saying if someone has a melatonin allergy they’re gonna have a pretty hard time avoiding exposure to it
Okay? And?
I guess i should be asking the same of you, you brought up allergies but werent trying to make any kind of point?
I’m pretty sure my point was that some of the children hospitalized probably had allergic reactions.
What that has to do with arresting people over soy is beyond me though.
the part where people were arrested over melatonin
Fussy parents though they may be, 7% of emergency visits is wildly high. Like… How is it possibly that high?
Too much melatonin can cause issues. It can also mess with prescriptions for blood clotting, seizures, birth control, high blood pressure, diabetes and immunosuppressants.
LD50.
Which means lethal dose in 50% of a population.
An LD1 dose would be too high.
Yeah no they didn’t need to go to the hospital, as a kid I titrated up to 8 pills at once before I decided it didn’t work.