Melbourne teenager Bianca Jones died after suspected Laos methanol poisoning. Photo: Facebook
Six tourists have died of suspected methanol poisoning in Laos, and more are still in hospital. An expert explains why methanol kills, and how to survive.
Surviving methanol poisoning requires getting medical help fast - but getting that care is far from straightforward when you are miles away from a hospital.
Six foreign tourists have died in the past week after consuming drinks containing methanol in Vang Vieng, Laos. Many more were caught up in the incident, including a Kiwi who has since returned home.
Freelance journalist Erin Hale is based in Taiwan, but has spent time in Laos. She says that while there is a clinic in Vang Vieng, she does not think it is equipped to handle a case as serious as methanol poisoning.
"My guess is that they're mostly dealing with tourists who fall off their scooter, tourists who get dehydration ... they're probably pretty good at delivering a baby, but I would think that they're not going to be so used to something as different as methanol poisoning," she said.
Hale said the closest hospital with the ability to treat methanol poisoning would be in Bangkok, Thailand. Getting there from Vang Vieng is tricky.
"You're going to have to get from the centre of Laos south to Vientiane - that's a three hour drive - and then get to the airport and then get on a plane for an hour at least to fly to Bangkok, and then get off the plane and go to a hospital in the city and maybe you're sitting in traffic for another hour," she said.
David Ranson heads the Department of Forensic Medicine at Monash University in Melbourne, and in today's episode of The Detail he explains why methanol is so lethal.
"It breaks down into some very nasty chemicals in the body. Chemicals like formaldehyde, an embalming fluid, essentially, used in pathology labs to preserve tissue ... and then from formaldehyde it goes down into formic acid.
"Formic acid is a very nasty acid inside the body and it actually attacks the way our cells effectively breathe or make energy... and as a consequence cells die," Ranson said.
The result of that is organ failure.
One thing that can play in a victim's favour is that often drinks contain both ethanol and methanol, and ethanol - the alcohol in drinks including beer, wine and spirits - delays the effects of methanol.
Methanol naturally occurs in the process of distilling, so sometimes cases are caused by a bad batch of home brewed alcohol. But most of the time methanol is used as a cheap way to boost the alcohol content of a drink, and that's a counterfeit industry that's flourishing according to methanol awareness campaigner Colin Ahearn. That is a problem when it comes to the traditional advice to only drink bottled drinks and to watch bartenders open them.
"They will mass produce spirits, they have nice little stickers for brand-new bottles with nice little caps. You could not tell the difference, they've even got the government import label over the top of the bottle," he says.
Ahearn has a Facebook page called Just Don't Drink Spirits in Bali. He started it in 2018 mainly to educate people about methanol poisoning.
He agrees with both Ranson and Hale, that despite methanol poisoning being a long-standing issue, there just isn't enough awareness.
Erin Hale's advice is to educate yourself before travelling and then ask people they meet along the way about the reputation of different bars.
"Some of the bar and hotel staff will be very nice and are extremely helpful or if you find foreigners living there you can also ask around. Because there will be places that have a reputation for being legit and there will be places that have a reputation for being a frat bar."
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