Get Your Vitamin C - Unless You are Exposed to Chromium
Chromium 6: A Killer Compound With An Improbable Trigger
Even miniscule amounts of chromium 6 can cause cancer. Blame that do-gooder nutrient, vitamin C.Brown University researchers have discovered that naturally occurring vitamin C reacts inside human lung cells with chromium 6, or hexavalent chromium, and causes massive DNA damage. Low doses of chromium 6, combined with vitamin C, produce up to 15 times as many chromosomal breaks and up to 10 times more mutations - forms of genetic damage that lead to cancer - compared with cells that lacked vitamin C altogether.
Chemistry sure is hard.