Tucker Paving is totally immersed in construction and big on employee and work zone safety, so it won’t come as any surprise to learn that news reports about construction and construction workers tend to get our complete attention.
Recently, our attention was drawn to a local television report about a 50-year-old British construction worker who had developed an acute case of hepatitis — apparently by doing something that sounds on the surface to be so innocent. That would be the consumption of energy drinks.
However, this wasn’t just your routine consumer of energy drinks. This was a super consumer, someone who drank up to five cans worth of the energy-producing mix per day for a solid three weeks to help keep up with his heavy workload.
According to the TV news report, based on an article from Scripps Media, the construction worker ended up in the hospital with nausea, vomiting, and yellow-looking eyes and skin. Doctors later diagnosed him with hepatitis C, which causes inflammation of the liver, and they traced the likely cause to a toxic level of the niacin, or vitamin B3, found in the energy drinks he had been consuming so much.
The Scripps Media report (you can read it in full at https://bit.ly/2goer0H) included this warning from the British Medical Journal: “We hope patients will be educated about the potential risks of energy drink overconsumption, and thus, many unnecessary liver injuries will be prevented.”
This whole episode reminds us about the cautionary quote: “Moderation in all things.” When it comes to energy drinks, moderation in consumption might just keep you hepatitis free and out of the hospital ER.
