[aphantastic]

LD50 for espresso is roughly 1 gallon per 50kg body mass. I wouldn’t want to, but I could drink 2 gallons of water without significant issue. If we accept that some people will naturally have a lower tolerance (and that espresso isn’t the strongest drink in the world), it’s not hard to see a caffeine overdose itself being fatal.

(based on 36ml espresso having 110mg caffeine, LD50 caffeine is 150-200mg/kg)

[Tade0]

I see one problem here: caffeine is soluble in water and a diuretic, meaning anyone attempting suicide by coffee would have a bad time doing it.

Healthy kidneys work through around a litre of blood a minute, so my guess is that, ahem, "breaking the seal" would keep caffeine levels in check.

[bumby]

Let’s go back to the OP, which asked about coffee. A quick search shows the LD50 for coffee is about 118 cups. At 6 oz per cup, that’s roughly 21 liters. The LD50 for water is listed as 6 liters (below what you’d drink “without significant issue” btw). So someone is much more likely reach the LD50 for water well before caffeine when drinking coffee.

Are there other caffeine delivery mechanisms that differ? Of course, but that’s not what the OP asked. The question was about the toxicity of coffee. That’s why it’s not worth arguing when something like caffeine powder provides the majority of ODs. Likewise there’s going to be variation in toxicity between individuals but those numbers are intended to be generalizable numbers to a population.

[folmar]

1 gallon = 7.6 l, and anectada from Wikipedia (referenced to https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-...) says 6 l in 3 hours killed a man. Half-life of caffeine is approximately 5 h, so quite similar.

[bumby]

1 gal is about half that (3.8 liters)

[ggm]

UK/imperial gallon is 4.5l US gallon is 3.78l more people used to use imperial than US but now most commonwealth economies are metric.

[bumby]

Fair enough, but it seems per clear that the OP was referring to US gal but the math was just off by double.