Low safrole clonal selections are grown in plantations for commercial use, as safrole is considered a low-risk toxin.
22.
Low safrole clonal selections are grown in plantations for commercial use, as safrole is considered a low-risk toxin.
23.
The Food and Drug Administration in 1960 banned safrole, found in sassafras root, because it has been linked with liver cancer.
24.
In that role, safrole, like many naturally occurring compounds, may have a small but measurable ability to induce cancer in rodents.
25.
The reason safrole is so bad is it causes the production of free radicals that damage DNA severely, and that DNA damage becomes cancer.
26.
By simply giving the animals safrole at night, when natural melatonin levels are highest, the researchers reduced the incidence of cancer by 20 percent.
27.
Even these substances are covered by the Delaney clause, so that, for example, safrole may not be added to root beer in the USA.
28.
The essential oils within the leaf are rich in safrole, a substance also found in sassafras, which has been shown to be carcinogenic in animals.
29.
The offending chemical is called safrole, although it sounds much more baleful by its longer name, 4-allyl 1-1, 2-methylenedioxybenzene.
30.
Laboratory animals that were given oral doses of sassafras tea or sassafras oil that contained large doses of safrole developed permanent liver damage or various types of cancer.
