Internet slimming pills that make users fatally overheat

Dinitrophenol aka slimming pills aka DNP

There is an industrial chemical Dinitrophenol, or DNP, used primarily nowadays as a pesticide, in recent years it has been increasingly abused by those attempting to find a way of losing weight — fast. Taken orally, it speeds up the metabolism, making the body burn up fat. 

Take Sarah Houston for instance who had suffered from eating disorders from the age of 14, first anorexia and then bulimia. And while her parents had thought she was over the worst of it, she had, in fact, been taking DNP for the previous 18 months. Then, last September, the medical student took what turned out to be a fatal dose while away studying at Leeds University.  

At first no one knew what had caused her death. But then toxicology tests on the substance found in that brown envelope

 (containing dozens of capsules of the industrial chemical Dinitrophenol, or DNP) came up with an answer.

 At an inquest earlier this week, coroner David Hinchliff concluded that DNP was ‘entirely’ responsible for Sarah’s death.

Her parents are now campaigning to highlight the risks of taking DNP and, as the Mail reveals today, are joined in that call by others who have lost children to this drug. 

Four young men and women are now thought to have died in Britain after taking the drug in the past six years, three of them in the past six months alone.