The Thailand expat forum for Travel, Lifestyle and Fun.

kingwilly

happens quickly, melbourne aquarium had a few cases a year or two ago, form the aircons outside the building.

come on watters....

food poisoning and airborne diseases are probably the first port of call.... dont end up like ET

kingwilly

edit above, seems poisoning rumour everywhere anyway.

too late now, but surely this would have been a case for the diplomats to get involved with??

cremation makes it look as if the thai's are hiding something...

MustavaMond

^
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.

__________________



Profiteering From War and Disease, Corporate Owned "News" Media Deliberately Dis-Informs in Order to Further Its Own Agenda- PROFIT

nidhogg

Not sure. This is from one of the first posts:

"On our way to the hospital she started turning really blue and moaning loudly".


The technical term for turning blue is "Cyanosis" (due to lack of oxygenated blood). I do have an itchy feeling soem doc may have said "cyanosis" at some point, which was misheard as "cyanide", and hence all the speculation down that route.

As far as a quick look can tell, not many (but one or two) pesticides induce cyanosis. Often they induce a red colour to the skin. Strychine can give a blue colour. The arsenical poisons give the breath smell (IIRC).

carbon monoxide poisoning is a possibility maybe.

Hmmm.

__________________
facilis est descensus Averni

MustavaMond

Hmmmmm, Indeed.
I can imagine strychnine or arsenic would both be readily availble as pesticide.
You're right, the aforementined blue colouring of St. Onge is signifigant.

walrus

It won't be Legionnaires disease as this takes a lot longer than a few hours to take effect ... Legionnaires disease

Jet Gorgon

OMG, TD forensic murder mystery writer wannabes gumshoe the clues. How fascinating.

walrus

OMG, Snakehead's drunk too much Cab Sav again ... how fascinating.

Butterfly

this is indeed highly suspicious, why would they do that ???

guyinthailand

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.

EmperorTud

^ 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.

__________________
Mortals you defy the Gods, I sentence you to travel among unknown stars, until you find the Kingdom of Hades, your bodies will stay as lifeless as stone.

English Noodles

Yes, your car exhast fumes.
Maybe they are just writen in Thai, and you are unable to read them?

The alarm bells will start wring if the guy comes back to Thailand in a few months time to hook-up with some young Thai stunner.

guyinthailand

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

tjyflhol

Do you really envision the deaths being caused by astute Muslim terrorists on a secret tourist poisoning mission?

guyinthailand

You can answer your own question if you read my (edited) post.

tjyflhol

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

guyinthailand

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.

Agent_Smith

^Don't buy the terrorist angle. Not flashy.

walrus

Symptoms of Cholera usually consist of very severe diarrhea which cause rapid dehydration which in severe untreated cases can lead to shock and death.

However, in these particular cases there has been no mention of any preceeding diarrhea, only stomach pain and vomiting.

There is another type of food poisoning (from the same family of bacteria that causes Cholera) which comes from uncooked shellfish but this is very rarely fatal.

Although there are Cholera outbreaks in Thailand from time to time it is not common ... here is a report citing Cholera outbreaks in Thailand during a 25 year period from 1982 to 2007.

Any sort of poisoning which causes severe vomiting or/and diarrhea can have very severe implications due to the loss of water from a persons body and if untreated can ultimately be fatal.

Butterfly

that's why we have nostrils,

as long as yours are not stuffed, you should be fine