Two students from Northumbria University were nearly killed in a botched experiment that gave them the equivalent of 300 cups of coffee.
The experiment was to measure the effect caffeine has on exercise. The students should have been given 0.3g of caffeine in an orange juice mix and then assessed in an exercise test to judge the impact. But errors in the experiment meant that the students were given 100 times that dosage-30g of caffeine. When you consider that there is 0.1g of caffeine in an average cup of coffee then you can see the huge amount of caffeine we are talking about here.
The error happened due to the fact that calculations had been done on a mobile phone and the decimal point was put in the wrong place. In addition, no risk assessment had been done for the test. Prosecutor Adam Farrer said at Newcastle Crown Court ,"The staff were not experienced or competent enough and they had never done it on their own before. The university took no steps to make sure the staff knew how to do it."
In fact the two students were rushed to hospital and could have died. One student was kept in hospital for 6 days, had short term memory loss and lost 12kg in weight. The other student spent two days in intensive care and lost 10kg in weight. The view is that both men only survived the dose as they were fit and active young people.
Northumbria University were fined £400,000 for the incident. The University said that they were extremely sorry for the incident, a statement reads, "The university is genuinely sorry for what happened in this case. This was an isolated incident. We reacted promptly to what took place. Bothe students are now pursuing civil claims.
How much caffeine is safe?
First of all it is difficult to say exactly how much caffeine a person should have each day as each person will differ in how they react to caffeine but the following can be said as a general guidance. For healthy adults with no associated health problems 300mg-400mg of caffeine can be safely consumed in a day. To make sense of this this amount is equivalent to about 5 shots of espresso.
A review by the European Food Safety Authority concluded that a daily safe dose of 400mg is safe for adults and single doses of 200mg at one time are fine if you are engaging in exercise directly after the dose.