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Woman poisoned by slimming pills bought on internet
Rashid Razaq27 Jun 2008
A woman desperate to lose weight poisoned herself with banned slimming pills she bought over the internet.
Selena Walrond, 26, died five days after starting the course of the drug DNP, which was also used by bodybuilders and as a pesticide.
A Croydon inquest heard how she became so obsessed with losing weight she took a gram of the drug - more than five times the amount used by the most extreme bodybuilders - the day before she died.
Short for dinitrophenol, DNP causes the taker's temperature to rocket and boosts the metabolic rate by interfering with cell respiration.
By inhibiting the cell's ability to breathe, metabolism is increased - meaning fat is burned rapidly.
Miss Walrond, who weighed 15 stone and was 5ft 3ins tall, was found by her mother, Anjennis, in a cold bath as she desperately tried to cool down after the drug sent her temperature soaring.
She was taken to hospital but suffered a cardiac arrest and died.
Croydon coroner's court heard how Miss Walrond had in recent years become so worried about her shape she developed a fear of being seen in public.
The otherwise normal, lively girl had struggled with her weight throughout her twenties.
Her family said she scoured the internet for treatments and eventually found a Chinese website selling the DNP pills. Miss Walrond's sister Asha, 30, a former school administrator, said her self-esteem had been badly damaged by her weight.
She added: "Her weight used to embarrass her and she was not confident enough to leave the house sometimes.
"Selena was quite a chubby baby. She lost all the weight, but when she got to about 21 she started to put it on again. She must have put on about five or six stone over five years."
Her mother took her daughter to hospital after finding her in the bath "sweating, agitatedand running a fever" on 19 August last year. Mrs Walrond said: "Selena's life has been cruelly snatched away, all because she was desperate to lose weight.
"DNP is lethal. Please do not take it. If you want to lose weight, do it the sensible way.
"She had ambitions, she wanted to travel and make a success of herself once she lost the weight."
DNP was popular in the Thirties as a weight loss drug but was banned in 1938 because of fatalities and its side effects, including rapidly developing cataracts.
The drug is also used as a pesticide to suppress plant growth but remains unlicensed in Britain.
Coroner Roy Palmer, recording a verdict of accidental death, issued a warning to stop others from using the fat-stripping pill, adding: "I do not for a moment think Selena intended to die. She intended to lose weight."
