Natural origin provides no guarantee of safety or harmlessness

Evidence

One of the most toxic substances we can realistically encounter in our lives, botulinum toxin (Botox), is naturally produced by bacteria in spoiled meat and was a common cause of fatal poisoning until the introduction of industrially produced nitrite curing salt. Similarly deadly is tetanospasmin, the toxin of the tetanus bacterium, whose spores are somewhere in the soil waiting to get into the wound of an injured animal (or human, for that matter). Certain jellyfish, snakes, spiders or snails contain enough venom per animal to kill several people. — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 729

Categorization

• CANDY: Botox being a fatal food poison before curing salt is a great dinner-party reversal of the ‘natural = safe’ intuition.
• SHARE: Send to a friend who fusses over ‘chemicals’ in food — botulinum and tetanus spores as the natural counter-example.