Saturday, December 5, 2015

Is cyanocobalamin safe?

Cyanocobalamin is a commonly-used source of vitamin B12 in vitamin supplements, but concerns about its safety has been raised due to the fact that it contains cyanide. While there seems to be a lot of articles going around the internet that claims cyanocobalamin is dangerous or toxic, it is actually safe for humans. Although cyanocobalamin contains cyanide, the amount in it is too insignificant to cause any damage. In fact, our bodies deal with detoxifying cyanide regularly because it naturally occurs in many of the fruits and vegetables we consume.

One study shows that 1,000 micrograms of cyanocobalamin contains only 20 micrograms of cyanide, and for a 140 pound person, it takes 3,175 micrograms of cyanide to cause a risk and 31,750 grams to become lethal. This means if you took a vitamin B12 supplement that contains 1000 micrograms of cyanocobalamin, you would need to take about 158 of them at once for the cyanide content to even become a potential risk. Additionally, only vitamin B12 supplements would even contain that high an amount of cyanocobalamin; most multivitamins actually contain 100 (1667% the daily value) or less.