Comfrey listed as dangerous

Press, 23 August 1984, Page 13

Comfrey listed as dangerous

NZPA-AAP Melbourne The herb, comfrey, which grows widely round Melbourne and is used by thousands of people throughout the state as food and a medicine, has been officially declared a substance of extreme danger to life in Victoria. Victorian Health Commission officials have placed comfrey on schedule seven of the Poisons Register because they believe alkaloids in it may cause liver damage and cancer. Schedule seven substances are described as those which are of such extreme danger to life as to warrant limitation of their distribution to qualified or experienced persons. The chairman of the commission’s poisons advisory committee, Dr Ernest Aldred, has described the action as a virtual prohibition.

The scheduling would not stop people eating or using comfrey they grew themselves, he said. Dr Aldred said the action was taken after a review of 78 references in scientific journals as well as research by a Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation toxicologist in Melbourne, Dr Claude Culvenor. A spokesman for National Nutritional Foods, Mr Rod Brennan, said comfrey was one of the most popular herbs. Its retail market in Australia was about sAustloo,ooo ($165,000) a year for internal use and of similar value for ointments. Mr Brennan said the commission had “unnecessarily alarmed people” because there was a great deal of controversy about the validity of the scientific evidence it had studied.