Thailand poisonings might have been caused by DEET

[slimvictor]

Two Canadian sisters found dead in their Thailand resort in June might have died from DEET poisoning, CBC News reported today.

According to French-language arm of the public broadcaster, which saw a copy of the Thai autopsy, medical examiners found high concentrations of the mosquito repellent in the bodies of Audrey, 20, and Noemi, 25, Belanger.

DEET is one ingredient in a popular local cocktail in Thailand that also includes cola, cough syrup and kratom leaves, a narcotic.

The Phuket Wan Tourism News also reported that pesticide killed the girls at the Phi Phi Island resort.

The newspaper said it could be months before autopsy results are revealed.

More from GlobalPost: Canadian sisters die in Thailand hotel from poisoning

CBC said that too much of the potentially toxic DEET might have been added to the Quebec girls’ drinks.

Police discovered the Belangers after hotel staff didn’t receive an answer from repeated attempts to clean the room.

The girls had apparently bled from the gums, the bodies were covered in lesions, there was vomit in the room and their finger and toenails were blue.

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http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/...hailand-poisonings-deet-kratom-phi-phi-island

 

[slimvictor]

A Strange, Hallucination-Inducing Thai Drink Killed Two Canadian Sisters

Autopsy reports on the two Canadian sisters (20 and 26) who were found dead in their hotel room in Thailand in June show they may have been poisoned by the insecticide DEET, CBC news Montreal reports.

The news agency accessed the girls' autopsy reports from Bangkok hospital. They say that the insecticide is used in a euphoria and hallucination-inducing cocktail brewed on the streets of the Thai island of Phi Phi.

The girls were on vacation on the islands, which you'd recognize as the backdrop for the 2000 thriller The Beach starring Leonardo DiCaprio. In early June, local police found them dead in their hotel room after the staff hadn't seen them for days. Their deaths were originally attributed to "serious food poisoning" or possibly toxins from blowfish or mushrooms, The Daily Mail reported in June.

New reports from the autopsies on the girls suggest that they likely ingested the DEET while drinking a local "cocktail" called 4 X 100, which combines a tea made from Kratom leaves with Coca Cola, cough syrup, and maybe also the insect repellent or a variety of other drugs that range from methamphetamine, opiates and benzodiazepines. CBC didn't report any other specific chemicals found during the autopsy.

Because of their narcotic effects, Kratom plants are illegal in Thailand even though they grow there naturally. See images here of how they brew the drink, which is sometimes served up in buckets, PhuketWan, a Thai website, says.

Phi Phi authorities

The combination is supposed to induce euphoria and hallucinations in those who take it. Local authorities seem to think that the girls were accidentally overdosed with the DEET ingredient — that someone added too much. But how much would it actually take?

Deborah Blum analyzes just that question on her Wired Science Blog Elementa:

Our Environmental Protection Agency estimates that about 30 percent of the U.S. population uses a DEET-infused product every year. Plenty of us have accidentally swallowed a little during an over-enthusiastic assault on mosquitoes without getting sick (including myself). Not that you’d want to take it by the tumbler, of course. But it’s reasonable to ask whether it would take a tumbler to kill you The short answer, yes, pretty close to that.

So, the question remains, did the girls drink something containing tons of DEET and think it would be safe? Or did they not know what was in the drinks? Or is something else going on that authorities are trying to cover up?


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/a-st...led-two-canadian-sisters-2012-9#ixzz25yY5P2pQ