Be careful with messages recommending chlorine dioxide injections

A message is circulating on social media claiming that an injection containing "chlorine dioxide" has been developed with properties such as boosting the immune system, regenerating stem cells or preventing tumours or ageing. To justify its claim, the text attaches 28 links to alleged studies supporting these claims. This is FALSE. There are no peer-reviewed studies that support the benefits of chlorine dioxide in humans, and the ones that the author of the message adds either do not say so, or do not exist.

"The biggest secret of modern medicine is revealed: an injection containing chlorine dioxide in therapeutic applications boosts the immune system, regenerates stem cells, is anti-tumour, anti-carcinogenic and anti-ageing"

Chlorine dioxide is a gas popularly known as CDS, although it is also obtained by mixing sodium chlorite, distilled water —the mixture is known as MMS— and an acid. It is a highly oxidising substance used as a bleach in paper mills and water treatment plants. 

In Spain, as in other countries, its marketing for medical purposes has been prohibited for years, because, as the Spanish Medicines Agency (AEMPS in Spanish) states, "sodium chlorite, in aqueous solution and when administered under the indicated conditions, is transformed into chlorous acid which degrades to chlorine dioxide". It adds: "All these substances have a strong oxidising action, and their direct consumption under these conditions can cause abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, poisoning, renal failure and methaemoglobinaemia".

"These are highly toxic substances for bacteria and other microorganisms," explains Adelaida Sarukhan, an immunologist and scientific writer at the Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal in Catalan) in Barcelona. In other words, the real applications of chlorine dioxide are far away from medical ones, contrary to what the author of the Telegram message would have us believe. In fact, drug agencies around the world, including the Spanish one, and international bodies such as the WHO, warn of its toxicity and the increase in its consumption due to the covid-19 pandemic.

Broken and inconclusive links

The author of the message tries to justify his defence of the CDS with supposedly 28 studies – which in reality are 22 – dof which three lead to the same study, but from different websites, and four others are broken. As for the content of the correctly linked studies, none of them confirms the existence of an injection with such characteristics: in the first ones, chlorine dioxide toxicity is studied in mice; in others, the purifying capacity of chlorine dioxide in water infected by a parasite (Cryptosporidium parvum) and how its ingestion affects mice is observed; others discuss the disinfectant capacity of chlorine dioxide on surfaces against certain viruses; and another, published in 1982, raises the possibility of studying the properties of chlorine dioxide in humans, but without conclusive results…

In conclusion, none of the studies it provides analyse and/or demonstrate the benefits of injected chlorine dioxide in humans. 

Is it injected?

Just because chlorine dioxide is useful for detoxifying and treating water does not mean that it can be used to treat infections. In fact, ingesting it or taking it into the human body can be dangerous: "Both chlorine dioxide and sodium chlorite are also highly toxic to our cells, so exposure to high amounts of them can have very harmful effects on our health," warns the immunologist. 

Chlorine dioxide has been used for more than 100 years to kill microbes, for example when you want to sterilise an operating room or a restaurant kitchen. "These agents are sterilising because they are so powerful that they destroy all known forms of life, not just bad microbes, but all human cells," adds Xavier Giménez, a chemist and science populariser at the University of Barcelona. 

On a metallic surface such as the kitchen, where there are only polluting and harmful life forms, its use is not problematic, but in no case, the expert ensures, can it be a medicine.

Alleged 'cure-all' for everything

Everything has been said about chlorine dioxide: that it cures cancer, AIDS, hepatitis, malaria, H1N1, Ebola, acne, autism and now, more recently, covid-19. 

At Verificat we have already published lots of articles disproving these assertions, all linked to the pandemic: "It is important to stress that there is no clinical trial or health authority that supports its use as a medicine and, on the contrary, it can pose a serious health risk, as warned by the WHO and the Spanish Medicines Agency (AEMPS)," concludes the expert.