5/8/2011 Bedbug Spray Linked To Thailand Tourist Death: May Have Had Reaction To Overdose Of Insecticide
TOURIST Sarah Carter may have died mysteriously in Chiang Mai earlier this year from reaction to an overdose of insecticide, a New Zealand television show speculated tonight.
The ‘Sixty Minutes’ program took samples from a Chiang Mai hotel room for testing and found traces of an insecticide, chlorpyrifos, which is banned from domestic use in some countries.
A Phuketwan reporter visited the Laleena guesthouse on Phi Phi soon after the deaths while samples of household chemicals were being taken for testing, but no cause of the fatalities was ever established.
Sarah Carter’s death was one of seven in Chiang Mai over a period of several weeks earlier this year. The deaths have yet to be adequately explained by local authorities, who believe they were coincidental.
According to New Zealand reports, the ‘Sixty Minutes’ program has produced ”credible evidence” that Sarah Carter died due to insecticide poisoning.
Chemical samples were taken from the bedroom that 23-year-old Ms Carter stayed in at the Downtown Inn, at a time when the entire fifth floor was being pulled apart and cleaned.
Before leaving for Chiang Mai, ‘Sixty Minutes’ spoke to a New Zealand scientist who suspected insecticide poisoning.
”I think she’s been killed by an overzealous sprayer who has been acting on the instructions of the hotel owner to deal with the bed bugs,” chemical expert Dr Ron McDowall, who works for the United Nations cleaning up toxic rubbish dumps, was quoted as saying on the site 3news.co.nz.
He said the traces brought brought back were small, but the fact that the chemical was found three months later, in a room that had been scrubbed, points to chlorpyrifos poisoning.
Among other theories is one that goes that the heavy use of chemicals on foodstuffs grown around Chiang Mai may have left residues in a meal eaten by Ms Carter and her two friends, who also fell ill but survived.
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