Question: why is cyanide dangerous?

Oli Wilson answered on 4 Nov 2017:

Cyanide is what’s known as a respiratory poison – it stops our cells respiring, which we need to do to release energy from food. Cyanide gums up an important enzyme in mitochondria (the cells’ power plants) and stops them producing a chemical called ATP, which is what gives us/our cells energy. No ATP, no energy, no life!

Additional fun fact: apple pips, cherry stones and some almonds contain chemicals that our body turns into cyanide. You don’t really need to worry about it though – you’d need to eat over 1,000 apple pips to be in danger, and if you ate that many apples at once you’d probably get other problems waaaay before cyanide poisoning!