By Melissa Davey
Publication Date: 2026-01-15 14:00:00
A 60-year-old man with no history of mental illness presented to a hospital emergency room insisting that his neighbor was poisoning him. Over the next 24 hours, he suffered increasingly severe hallucinations and tried to escape the hospital.
Doctors eventually discovered that the man was consuming sodium bromide, an inorganic salt used primarily for industrial and laboratory purposes such as cleaning and water treatment, on a daily basis.
He bought it over the internet after ChatGPT told him he could use it instead of table salt because he was concerned about the health effects of salt in his diet. Sodium bromide can build up in the body and cause a condition called bromism, which leads to symptoms such as hallucinations, drowsiness, and incoordination.
It’s cases like this that worry Alex Ruani, a doctoral student in health misinformation at University College London, about the launch of ChatGPT Health in Australia.
Sign up: Email for AU Breaking News
A limited number of Australian users can already…