Hundreds of tons of poisonous chrysanthemum flowers from Sheyang county, Jiangsu Province, are being sold as a beverage every year, China National Radio (CNR) revealed on Thursday.

Every year about 2,000 tons of chrysanthemums are produced in Yangma town, a nationwide center for the cultivation of the flower. Among these, around 200 tons are dried by being smoked with sulfur, CNR said.

A local seller of dried chrysanthemums told CNR that sulfur was used widely among chrysanthemum farmers, as they want to save money.

The same unidentified source of CNR claimed the sulfur-dried chrysanthemums typically end up in markets of Guangdong Province.

Using electricity and coal to dry the flowers costs between 4,000 to 5,000 yuan ($617-772) higher per ton than if sulfur is used.

The sulfur-dried flowers sell quite well.

"They are sold at about 50 yuan a kilogram and the 200 tons of sulfur-smoked chrysanthemum this year could not satisfy market demand,"the seller told CNR, adding that no one can detect the use of sulfur.

A local farmer who used sulfur to dry the flowers said that they put the chrysanthemums in a ventilated environment and the pungent odor of sulfur would disappear in a time.

After testing by China General Chamber of Commerce in Beijing, it was found the sample of the farmer's chrysanthemum flowers contained 2.3 grams of sulfur per kilogram, a level 23 times over the national limit.