Coumarin is found in many plants, including lavender, woodruff, and sweet clover; and also in strawberries, apricots, cherries, and cinnamon. Coumarin smells like vanilla but what little flavor it has is bitter. This may serve to repel some insects. It is found in high percentages in the tonka bean (Dipteryx odorata, Fabaceae (Pea) Family). Tonka bean extract is commonly used to adulterate vanilla in Mexico.
   I have in my possession a huge bottle of vanilla that I admit to buying in Mexico for a ridiculously low price. It smells richer, and much less like alcohol than my little American bottle of vanilla. Apparently that's a good sign that it's not vanilla. The brand, Daancy, appears in an FDA Import Alert listing products that are subject to detention without examination due to coumarin content. (Meaning that it's really Tonka Bean extract.) I guess next time I'll know better.
   Coumarin was banned by the FDA as a food additive in 1940, due to studies showing liver toxicity. There is also some evidence that it may be carcinogenic.
   Additionally, it is a factor in some cases of livestock poisoning. Some common molds break coumarin down into dicoumarol.
   Dicoumarol interferes with the body's ability to produce vitamin K. Vitamin K is essential to blood clotting. Thus, dicoumarol acts as an anticoagulant.
   When cattle eat sweet clover that has spoiled, the dicoumarol works to thin their blood, leading (in more severe cases) to internal and/or external bleeding.
   Dicoumarol derivatives have been used as rat poison (namely, warfarin). Rodents that are poisoned this way die from internal bleeding.
   A further derivative, warfarin sodium, is an anti-coagulant prescription drug, the use of which must be carefully monitored by a physician, lest the patient bleed to death.

   Coumarin is used in fragrances and cosmetics, and to scent tobacco. During the tobacco exposé, when it came to light that the companies were adding coumarin to their cigarettes, some people seemed to think that was rat poison, but it's really not quite the same thing.

   Coumarin itself may or may not have anticoagulant properties.

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