Thread: Deaths on Koh Phi Phi

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With acute stomach pain, vomiting but no diarrhea, I'd rule out food spoilage. And no esophageal burning either in the preliminary autopsy of Bergheim would seem to preclude corrosive fumes or gas inhalation

From the symptoms and rapid death I think accidental pesticide poisoning, from bottles of water refilled by the guest house from a contaminated source, likely a refillable 5 gallon container.

Mtr.Kells ,as he left the room likely consumed less of the water.
As for the odor reported by both survivors -

It has been suggested that some poisons, when ingested cause the individual to emit odor.

Because I am certain that I was deliberately poisoned in Pai when I complained about the food in a guest house restaurant where I ate regularly, I can imagine someone serving them a poison cocktail that included cyanide and, say, pesticides. Or, they ate some (accidentally) improperly prepared cassava which has cyanide compounds, which would explain the traces in their bodies, plus perhaps they were also (deliberately or not) poisoned with something else such as an insecticide. It is worth noting that when plastics are burned cyanide compounds are given off which is why a high percentage of people who die in fires first succumb to plastic (cyanide, etc) fumes before they are burned. And a Thai pastime is burning plastic garbage: sacks, bottles, etc. Couple that with cassava dust in the air, and cassava cyanide compounds in the water runoff from cassava processing plants: there are multiple possible ways cyanide could have gotten into their bodies.

And since there is so much poison applied to virtually every surface in Thailand 24 hours a day it is entirely possible some of that poison found its way, deliberately or not, into their food, or drinks. Try living away from the tourist areas and you will see legions of folks with the 5 gallon spray tanks on their backs with which they happily spray poison just about everywhere. Empty bottles of poison are cut open and used for water ‘bowls’ for animals, or are just left lying about—or perhaps double as a water bottle. I finally figured out why, in the rainy green season, why some yards were completely brown. Instead of mowing their grass, they just defoliate it with poison! Saves gas for a lawnmower! Thrifty Thais! And don’t get me going on embalming fluid (formalin) in the meat here: it is a well known problem because it is such a good preservative when you lack refrigeration. My Thai friend who works in the (Thai) FDA (Food and Drug Administration), tells me of their efforts to check and curtail formalin. She sent me some formalin test kits which at one time you could buy in some 7-11’s here. Even hungry street dogs will not eat much of the “American breakfast” sausage as well as other street vendor meats. Try this experiment: cut open an apple and leave it on the counter—it should get brown quickly. But most apples here will stay nice and white for days or weeks. Even the ants won’t eat them.

Thailand is a poisoned land, which is one reason you see so little wildlife. Dogs in my village were routinely deliberately poisoned. One drunk idiot who lived next to a Wat which I frequented to administer medicine and care to the temple dogs---one night he was so drunk he was yelling and carrying on outside the huts of the sleeping monks. I asked him to be quiet, and this apparently caused him to lose face so that a few days later he poisoned and killed 10 of my temple dog friends. Smell the mothballs in the men’s urinals? A brilliant Thai invention to kill…what exactly? Absolutely no reason to put moth balls in men’s restrooms but try telling that to most Thais. For some reason the women who clean the restrooms don’t put the mothballs in the women’s restrooms. I guess their ‘reasoning’ is that whatever comes out of women doesn’t require mothballs.

What’s breathing a little mothball poison when they have such a steady diet of other poisons in the air, water and food.

^ a poisoned land indeed. By staying in Bangkok I am doing untold damage to my respiratory system just by breathing each day.

I hear so many Thais coughing and wheezing, many using those inhalers or smoking, compounding their problems.

When I leave my car outside, within 24 hours it has a thin layer of dust covering it. That's what you are breathing into your lungs folks.

But back to your main point, many of the poisonous and dangerous products available to the public, such as carcinogenic insect killers and the like, which you can buy in an aerosol from any 7/11, carry no health warnings whatsoever and are used with gay abandon by the Thais.

These deaths reek of a cover up however, in typical Thai fashion.

If this many Thai people had suddenly died in the same time frame as these farangs from the same sort of as yet ‘unknown’ causes, would we hear about it? If we would, then that means that it is only farangs dying this way. I haven’t seen anything in the Thai media talking about Thai people dropping dead after visiting a bar or noodle stand. And if these farangs were deliberately poisoned (as I’m sure I was, see other posts), then the question is asked “why”? I was poisoned I believe, because I pissed off a food preparer at a guest house restaurant. But I can envision another scenario. Let’s say you’re a Muslim living in the south of Thailand which land was “annexed” (read: stolen) by Thailand some years back, and the campaign (nonviolent as well as terroristically violent) you’ve organized to get it back has resulted in state-organized terror from Thailand, thereby keeping the violence cycle turning. And you—as an astute terrorist—notice how Thailand is hugely dependent on tourist dollars for survival and you think: “What is a cost-effective way of further hurting Thailand with an even greater loss of tourist dollars?” And all without drawing attention to the perpetrators.


But the above is of course all mere speculation and in all likelihood way off the mark.


And here we are with another rapid death after vomiting.
Phuket - German, 57, dies after severe vomiting


One type of food poisoning that could kill this quickly is the proposed culprit put forth by the Thais: cholera bacterium, which is usually self-limiting though the fatality rate can be greater than 50% in untreated severe cases, the fatality usually being due to dehydration. “Cholera is spread by ingestion of water, seafood, and other foods contaminated by the excrement of persons with symptomatic of asymptomatic infection.” Cholera: Gram-Negative Bacilli: Merck Manual Professional It would help if we knew the exact and full range of symptoms the victims displayed before dying.


And since cholera is a result of feces in water or food, and since Thais often don’t use toilet paper, (yes, they wipe with only their hands), or bother to then wash their hands with soap and water (do you ever even see soap in restrooms here?)—cholera is a possible explanation, especially if it is shown that the tourists got sick one day or longer after ingesting contaminated food/water. It’s true that if you want to make people sick then just put some shit in their food, either deliberately or accidentally. And the idea that cyanide has been explored in other posts but it should be noted that a cholera patient can have “cyanosis” without having cyanide, and this confusion may have been the source of the original reporter saying “cyanide” where what he may have been told was “cyanosis”.

“In its most severe forms, cholera is one of the most rapidly fatal illnesses known, and a healthy person's blood pressure may drop to hypotensive levels within an hour of the onset of symptoms; infected patients may die within three hours if medical treatment is not provided.[1] In a common scenario, the disease progresses from the first liquid stool to shock in 4 to 12 hours, with death following in 18 hours to several days, unless oral rehydration therapy is provided.” From Wikipedia

And Wikipedia says
“The major reservoir for cholera was long assumed to be humans themselves, but considerable evidence exists that aquatic environments can serve as reservoirs of the bacteria.”

Wikipedia also says that eating antacids can make it easier to get sick from cholera.

Merck Manual continues: “Persons living in endemic areas gradually acquire a natural immunity (to cholera)”. Which would explain why we haven’t heard of Thais dropping dead like this. See, it is a good idea to eat shit after all. And if Thais wipe using no toilet paper, imagine the care they put into water “treatment” for the drinking and cooking water, which water, if not properly treated, is a huge source of cholera outbreaks.


See the link below to view symptoms from other poisons including pesticides (such as carbamates and organophospates) which seem to be the only poisons in this particular table that produce both vomiting and diarrhea. General Principles: Poisoning: Merck Manual Professional
from the Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy Professional Edition

Originally Posted by tjyflhol

I'd stick with the cholera idea for now, a tad more plausible.

You can bet money that anti-terrorist investigators are checking out the terrorist angle given that Bin Laden, among others, have issued fatwahs calling for Muslims worldwide to kill Westerners and especially Americans whenever and wherever possible.

And cholera is a cheap bio-terror weapon, readily available.

Originally Posted by guyinthailand

I was poisoned I believe, because I pissed off a food preparer at a guest house restaurant

I believe you when you say this as I also believe that I was poisoned years ago on Phi phi iland by a guy that I think had the hots for my wife and needed farang out the way. If I hadden been as young and fit back then I think I could have been in real trouble.

The wife believes that these farangs have been murdered, so I guess it has made the Thai news as she new about it

“When I went back to the room, Jill was vomiting. She still thought it might be the food. We lay together for about two more hours. That is when I started vomiting. I thought something was wrong. He (I?) went outside and found a cart and wheeled Jill to the hospital. On our way to the hospital she started turning really blue and moaning loudly. She died shortly after.”

In cyanide poisoning skin color goes pink from cyanide-hemoglobin complexes so the fact that she turned “really blue” is noteworthy and rules out cyanide even though she had cyanosis. And if the victims didn’t have diarrhea—as it seems they didn’t--that seems to rule out the super quick acting deadly cholera bacteria, which was proposed by one Thai ‘authority’.

Below I compiled information from a table in the Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy which has poisons which include in their symptoms both 1) vomiting and 2) cyanosis (skin turning blue), since these were the two main symptoms that we’ve heard about. Note that shock or cardiac arrest also can cause the skin to turn blue. And so can carbon monoxide which can also cause vomiting.

Poisons: Pesticides (organophosphates, available everywhere in Thailand by the truckload; examples: parathion and malathion). Note: “Worldwide organophosphates are the pesticides most commonly involved in human poisoning.” Symptoms: Nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramping, excessive salivation, increased pulmonary secretion, headache, rhinorrhea, blurred vision, miosis, slurred speech, mental confusion, difficulty breathing, frothing at the mouth, coma; absorption via skin, inhalation, or ingestion. Plus another website includes muscle fasciculations, convulsions, cyanosis, dyspnea, shock, cardiac arrhythmias.

Poisons: Acetanilid, Aniline dyes and oil, Chloroaniline, Phenacetin (acetophenetidin, phenylacetamide) Symptoms: Cyanosis due to formation of methemoglobin and sulfhemoglobin, dyspnea, weakness, vertigo, angina, rashes and urticaria, vomiting, delirium, depression, respiratory and circulatory failure. Poisons: Barium compounds (soluble), Barium acetate, Barium carbonate, Barium chloride, Barium hydroxide, Barium nitrate, Barium sulfide, Depilatories, Explosives, Fireworks, Rat poisons Symptoms: Vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, tremors, seizures, colic, hypertension, cardiac arrest, dyspnea and cyanosis, ventricular fibrillation, severe hypokalemia, skeletal muscle weakness

Poisons: Chlorates, Nitrates, Permanent wave, Neutralizers Symptoms: Vomiting, nausea, diarrhea, cyanosis (methemoglobin), toxic nephritis, shock, seizures, CNS depression, coma, jaundice

Poisons: Chlorine (see also Hypochlorites), Chlorinated lime, Chlorine water, Tear gas Symptoms: Ingestion: Irritation, corrosion of mouth and GI tract, possible ulceration or perforation, abdominal pain, tachycardia, prostration, circulatory, collapse Inhalation: Severe respiratory and ocular irritation, glottal spasm, cough, choking, vomiting, pulmonary edema, cyanosis

Poisons: Iron (overdose), Carbonyl iron (see Carbon monoxide), Ferric salts, Ferrous salts, Ferrous gluconate, Ferrous sulfate, Vitamins with iron (NOTE: Children’s chewables with iron are remarkably safe) Symptoms: Vomiting, upper abdominal pain, pallor, cyanosis, diarrhea, drowsiness, shock; possible toxicity if > 20 mg/kg of elemental iron is ingested

Poisons: Nitrites, Amyl nitrite, Butyl nitrite, Nitroglycerin, Potassium nitrite, Sodium nitrite Symptoms: Methemoglobinemia, cyanosis, anoxia, GI disturbance, vomiting, headache, dizziness, hypotension, respiratory failure, coma

Poisons: Nitrobenzene, Artificial bitter almond oil, Dinitrobenzene. Symptoms: Bitter almond odor (suggests cyanides), drowsiness, headache, vomiting, ataxia, nystagmus, brown urine, convulsive movements, delirium, cyanosis, coma, respiratory arrest

Originally Posted by The Gentleman Scamp

Originally Posted by HBerghoff

My condolences as well Mr. Hillbilly.

Seconded.

it wasn't illbilly's sister.

he claims he didn't understand what he was posting