Florida’s Poison Control Centers are seeing an increase in the number of kids getting caffeine poisoning.
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“As an emergency medicine doctor, I’ve seen patients come in with signs of caffeine toxicity,” Dr. Sonya Rashid said. “Their hearts are beating pretty fast. You’re feeling kind of jittery, anxious.”
Dr. Rashid is a Medical Toxicologist and works at the Florida Poison Control Center in Jacksonville. She said more and more young people are consuming energy drinks and having adverse effects.
“There are no legislations in terms of how old you have to be in order to buy an energy drink,” Dr. Rashid said. “Some of these energy drinks have 200-300 milligrams of caffeine. To put that into context, a cup of coffee is about 100 milligrams, max, of caffeine.”
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So far this year, there have been 98 patients with caffeine poisoning, in Florida, according to poison control. 64 of those patients were under the age of 19. Forty of those patients were five years old or younger.