Over the past several years, Australian parents have brought melatonin supplements more and more into the homes to help their kids sleep. Julia Yarzar is the mother of two neurodiverse daughters, 8 and 11. She’s taken melatonin to reduce the clearly excessive stress of getting her to go to sleep at night. Now, experts are sounding the alarm about the dangerous trend of melatonin overuse. In fact, they’re seeing a more than 600 percent increase in calls to poison control hotlines about young children who have accidentally swallowed melatonin.
In Australia, melatonin is available only by prescription. It is only approved for limited use, such as treating short-term insomnia in older adults and as an aid for children diagnosed with autism. Nevertheless, several million parents are now buying melatonin online from overseas retailers, where prices are much cheaper. Yet the simplicity, combined with the absence of regulation in these transactions, has produced some pretty dark outcomes.
Surge in Poisoning Incidents
Melatonin has become more popular at the same time as there’s been a 600% increase in annual reported cases of children accidentally swallowing it. In Australia, poisons hotlines took almost 1,500 calls in 2024 for children who ate melatonin. This is a significant jump from the 697 animal cruelty calls received in 2019. In 2014, the NSW Poisons Information Centre received 200 calls related to melatonin exposures. At the same time, the WA Poisons Centre received 103 calls regarding melatonin for children aged 14 and under in 2019. By 2024, that number had more than doubled to 295 calls.
As medical toxicologist Genevieve Adamo explained, using these online products can be extremely hazardous. She noted the erratic and dangerous impacts they’ve been having on children school-aged all over Australia. “And we are already seeing unpredictable or unsafe effects in kids reported all around Australia from using these online products,” she stated. Such drastic increases in poisonings call into question the safety and efficacy of unregulated melatonin supplements.
The Risks of Unregulated Supplements
Health experts are deeply concerned about the safety risks that children face with the unregulated sale of melatonin online. Adamo is the first to acknowledge that rigorous testing has uncovered massive variability in the melatonin content of many of these supplements. “We have data from America … to suggest that melatonin supplements independently tested may contain as little as 10 percent of the melatonin they’re advertised to have; they may contain as much as 400 percent of the melatonin it’s advertised to have,” she explained.
Such inconsistency could create dangerous circumstances, especially for children who could be on various other medications. Adamo said he worries for those who might overdose. He continued, “This is what I worry about with kids on other prescription medications… accidentally mixing it and overdosing. I fear that this would pave the way for dire punitive outcomes. It can lead to coma, intensive care needs, or death. She further noted that Australia has been fortunate not to see cases resulting from these dangers so far, saying, “I think it’s purely luck in Australia that we haven’t seen a case of that yet.”
Tim Jones, an expert in the field, told CNN that it’s important to get prescription melatonin instead of ordering it from the Internet. Prescription melatonin is more costly, but safety is 100% guaranteed. He said, “If you’re purchasing melatonin online for your child, we have no idea what they’re really taking.”
Parental Perspectives on Melatonin Use
For parents like Julia Yarzar, the allure of melatonin lies in its potential to ease nightly struggles associated with sleep. Yarzar, who said the family’s life before they started using melatonin was both debilitating and traumatic, “I just was not coping at all. We were all just exhausted, and bedtime just became quite traumatic for us,” she recounted.
Now that Yarzar knew just how much cheaper prescription melatonin was compared to online melatonin, he had to decide. “I was pretty shocked at the difference, to be honest. I thought I’d really hit the jackpot,” she shared. The introduction of melatonin allowed her daughters to experience calmer bedtimes, which she found transformative: “Instantly, we moved bedtimes down to being about an hour long, and the calmness that they both experienced was quite mind-blowing.”
Along with the positive developments, Yarza is quick to note there is still a need for greater education about medication safety. “From my point of view, that means there’s a gap in education… We need to make sure that parents and people generally are aware that all medications have risks and need to be stored safely,” she stressed.
We applaud the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) for siding with science. It’s inherent to their actual consumers that they’re trying to trick. They call on consumers to be smart while purchasing medicines online. A TGA spokesperson stated, “The TGA advises consumers to exercise extreme caution when considering purchasing medicines, including dietary supplements and herbal preparations, over the internet.”
