We're all gonna die...of liver failure caused by acetaminophen overdose.

Last weekend, This American Life aired a special on acetaminophen, which turned out to be both informative and terrifying. I *highly* recommend listening to the episode.

If you're lazy, let me give you the message that I took home from it: The margin between a safe dosage of acetaminophen and a dosage that can cause liver failure is extremely slim, and it's unpredictable, i.e. different for every person. That means that even if you take just a leeeeetle bit more than recommended, or accidentally take the recommended dose of two products that contain acetaminophen, at the same time (Tylenol PM and NyQuil, let's say, to use an example that may or may not be drawn from personal experience), you could end up with liver failure. And/or death.

The link in the above paragraph is to a ProPublica article, which has a lot of the same information as the TAL podcast, but also additional info as well; ProPublica contributed a lot of the investigative reporting in the TAL piece. The article and its associated features are worth a perusal. But again, if you're lazy, ProPublica has come up with a list of five key takeaways that I'll cut and paste here:

1. About 150 Americans die a year by accidentally taking too much acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, federal data from the CDC shows.

2. Acetaminophen has a narrow safety margin: the dose that helps is close to the dose that can cause serious harm, according to the FDA.

3. The FDA has long been aware of studies showing the risks of acetaminophen. So has the maker of Tylenol, McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a division of Johnson & Johnson.

4. Over more than 30 years, the FDA has delayed or failed to adopt measures designed to reduce deaths and injuries from acetaminophen. The agency began a comprehensive review to set safety rules for acetaminophen in the 1970s, but still has not finished.

5. McNeil, the maker of Tylenol, has taken steps to protect consumers. But over more than three decades, the company has repeatedly opposed safety warnings, dosage restrictions and other measures meant to safeguard users of the drug.

A surprisingly large number of people have died from accidental acetaminophen overdose in the past decade (and even more have died of purposeful overdose, but that's a different beast altogether). By contrast, almost nobody has died of naproxen or ibuprofen overdose, though it is true that many naproxen and ibuprofen takers have had stomach bleeding as a result of their usage. Still, if I'm going to pick my poison, I'd rather have a stomach ulcer than a grave.

US deaths by accidental acetaminophen overdoseSource: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Multiple Cause of Death database

I don't take much Tylenol as it is, but I'm certainly going to be wary of my acetaminophen dosing from here on out!

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In completely unrelated news, I want to go to there.