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Viral claims regarding the purported dangers of common household plants belonging to the genus Dieffenbachia (shown above) have been on the internet for years. One article (titled, colorfully, My Son Died for This Damn Plant it Is Urgent That Everyone Knows, Kills a Child in 1 Minute and an Adult in 15!!) appears identically across multiple websites and provides the following representative claim: This post does not seek to debunk that specific story, in part because it comes with no details that allow any aspect of it to be verified. Instead, this post addresses more broadly the risk posed to humans by this widespread potted plant. Dieffenbachia is indeed very common among household plants (it's simple, and requires little sunlight), and eating its leaves or rubbing your eyes with your hands after coming into contact with the plant may indeed cause irritation, which in turn can cause the swelling described above. As far as the plant causing death, however, Ed Krenzelok, an emeritus professor of pharmacology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and a former director of the Pittsburgh Poison Center who has researched Dieffenbachia toxicity specifically, is skeptical: The risk of irritation from Dieffenbachia is not news. People have been aware of its properties as an irritant since at least the first century A.D. Later, Jamaican slave traders — sadistically — rubbed the juice of these plants on the tongues of slaves, causing their mouths to become painfully swollen, as a form of punishment, making one of its common names dumb cane. The cause of this irritation comes from a chemical called calcium oxalate, which exists in varying concentrations across the entire plant kingdom, including a variety of food crops. In Dieffenbachia and some other groups of plants, this chemical forms microscopic (but razor-sharp) crystals called raphides that can rip apart and irritate tissues in your mouth or your eyes, as described by Krenzelok: Calcium oxalate is a ubiquitous chemical in nature. It is produced as a byproduct of a variety of cellular processes, and can form many different types of chemical structures depending on the species of plant. Not limited to plants, it is also produced as a byproduct in mammalian metabolism as well, and it is one of the most common minerals that form kidney stones. The risk to humans — at least, when speaking about the reactions described in these viral posts — would come not from the inherent toxicity of calcium oxalate, but from physical abrasion caused by these tiny sharp crystals, as explained by the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia: In terms of contact with the eyes, Krenzelok says he frequently saw eye irritation at his center, but never traumatic, permanent eye damage: Krenzelok told us it was not uncommon at his center to see patients, most commonly children, for exposure to Dieffenbachia. In fact, it is the second most common plant exposure treated in American poison control centers, and a majority of those cases involve children. Krenzelok said the Center typically treated these cases by providing the child milk or water (It didn't matter. Basically, just to take the irritation away, he explained) and by offering assurances to the parents that there would be no long term problems once the pain subsided.
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