In many places, there is a custom of drinking realgar wine during the Dragon Boat Festival, which is said to ward off evil spirits and detoxify the body. However, experts have made a startling claim: drinking realgar wine is equivalent to eating arsenic and can easily lead to poisoning, so citizens should be cautious about consuming it.
Drinking realgar wine and eating zongzi (glutinous rice dumplings) is a traditional custom in China. In our province, many people purchase realgar from pharmacies according to ancient recipes to soak in wine before the Dragon Boat Festival. As a result, realgar becomes a hot item at the traditional Chinese medicine counters of several major pharmacies in Nanchang in the days leading up to the festival.
After visiting the traditional Chinese medicine counters at several major pharmacies in Nanchang, a reporter found that many citizens were coming to buy realgar. A salesperson at a certain Nanchang pharmacy explained that starting a week before the Dragon Boat Festival, many people came to buy realgar, mostly elderly individuals. Almost every year, realgar becomes a bestseller as the festival approaches. Ms. Zhang, who was purchasing realgar at the pharmacy, said that she had heard from an elderly neighbor a few days ago that holding realgar wine in the mouth and spraying it around the front and back of the house on the day of the Dragon Boat Festival, and also drinking some, could both disinsect and sterilize, as well as ward off evil spirits. Therefore, she had made a special trip to the pharmacy that day to buy some realgar to take home and soak in wine for the festival.
Subsequently, the reporter interviewed Director Yang from the Gastroenterology Department of the First Hospital of Nanchang. He told the reporter that the belief that drinking realgar wine can ward off evil and detoxify is superstitious, and he stated that drinking it can cause poisoning. He explained that the main chemical component of realgar is toxic arsenic disulfide. When heated, it undergoes a chemical reaction to form arsenic trioxide, which is arsenic trioxide. As is well known, arsenic is a highly toxic substance. If a person accidentally ingests it, 5 to 50 mg can cause acute arsenic poisoning, and more than 60 mg can be fatal. Symptoms of poisoning include nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea or watery stools with blood in them, accompanied by damage to the liver, spleen, and kidneys, a drop in blood pressure, circulatory failure, and even central nervous system paralysis, confusion, and coma. Drinking realgar wine after it has been heated is even more dangerous.
In addition, Director Yang also told the reporter that there have been cases of poisoning from drinking wine containing arsenic compounds. Therefore, it is best not to drink realgar wine to avoid poisoning.