After reviewing case reports of nicotine intoxications and suicide attempts, the pharmacologist Bernd Mayer found that the lethal dose of nicotine in humans must be somewhere between 500-1000 mg of absorbed – not just ingested – nicotine. Given that one of the first symptoms of intoxication is vomiting, and that 70% of the remaining nicotine in the digestive tract is metabolized by the liver before it reaches other organs, absorbing that much nicotine is not easy.
事实上，致命尼古丁剂量远远高于许多科学论文所宣称的30&mdash;60毫克。在审读了尼古丁中毒和尝试自杀的案例报告后，药物学家本恩德·梅耶（Bernd Mayer）发现人类尼古丁致死剂量必须要达到500&mdash;1000毫克吸收&mdash;&mdash;不仅是摄入&mdash;&mdash;尼古丁。中毒的首批症状之一是呕吐，并且消化道中70%的剩余尼古丁在到达其他器官之前已在肝脏中被新陈代谢，因此吸收那么多尼古丁并不是件容易事。