Chemist warns against taking diet pills
We've been speaking to him as part of our #DyingToDiet campaign.
All this week we're highlighting deadly diet pills and the devastating effects they can have.
21-year-old's Eloise Parry and Bethany Shipsey are just two examples of how dangerous they can be.
They died after taking pills containing DNP which they'd bought online.
DNP or Dinitrophenol is often used as a pesticide and it's illegal to sell it for human consumption.
We've been speaking to Simon Cotton who's a Senior Lecturer in Chemistry at the University of Birmingham and expert in DNP:
"It was discovered in World War 1 as a possible aid for weight loss, it was carefully studied by American scientisits about 10 years later and they found it would aid weight loss. But there was such a small margin between safe use and killing you that there was no way it could be recommended.
"DNP works in the body by interfering with the production of a chemical called ATP or Adenosine triphosphate, it's the bodies energy currency. By stopping the body producing ATP as it normally would, some energy is dissipated as heat. That's why one of the symptoms of DNP use is overheating of the body.
"Only a small amount will kill you."
"It's so dangerous, because only a small amount will kill you. It's honestly far too dangerous a chemical to use safely.
"If this was paracetamol, where you are told you mustn't take more than a certain number of tablets a day, people wouldn't do it. They would know, if they did, they could land themselves with a serious health problem or maybe kill themselves.
"People want easy ways of doing things. They're looking for a simple and painless way to lose weight, well there isn't one. Taking DNP is not painless.
"Don't go within a million miles of it"
"Don't go there, don't go within a million miles of it."