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Good morning and welcome to the Daily Os. It's Tuesday, the twenty sixth of November. I'm Emma, I'm Billy. Two nineteen year olds from Melbourne, Holly Bowls and Bianka Jones are among six people who have died from a suspected methanol poisoning incident in Lao. The Australians were visiting a tourist town in the Southeast Asian country when they fell ill. They were rushed to separate hospitals in Thailand, where they
died late last week. Speaking to media from Thailand after the death of his daughter, Bianka's father, Mark Jones said his teenager was enjoying the trip of a lifetime with one of her best mates.
This was meant to be a trip full of lifelong memories. Will forever miss our beautiful girl and hope her loss of life is not.
The suspected poisoning has claimed to the lives of tourists from Denmark, the US and the UK In what's now become a multinational investigation. Authorities in Lao have conducted raids and detained people for questioning, but no one has been charged yet. First, Emma, I think we should start with methanol for those of our listeners, and I include myself in this because I'm not super familiar with methanol. What is methanol poisoning?
Okay, So, methanol is a colorless liquid chemical. It's typically found in things like petrol cleaning products, and it has a sweet scent. So to look at methanol, to smell methanol, you wouldn't know that it wasn't alcohol that was safe to drink, So unlike ethanol, ethanol is the chemical present
in drinking alcohol. But methanol is toxic to humans. It's highly dangerous to consume and even a small amount of it can cause vomiting, an abdominal pain, and of course we know from this week's reports it can be lethal.
So how would a person know if they have consumed it.
It can be confusing at first for someone who has methanol poisoning because they might become sick or seem intoxicated, and they might confuse that with the effects of drinking alcohol of ethanol poisoning, so they may not even really know they have consumed methanol.
So the really serious symptoms aren't immediately present.
Exactly, or they seem similar to the serious symptoms of ethanol poisoning, right, But the main toxin in methanol can actually cause brain damage. It can impact the way that the human body cells produce energy. Blindness is another common side effect of methanol poisoning, and this damage can occur quite rapidly, which is kind of back to the heart of the issue of identifying it in the first place.
If diagnosed early, methanol poisoning can be treated, so that's within the kind of ten to thirty hours of ingestion after that fact, So if you can catch it within the ten to thirty hours, a person can be treated. They might have life saving treatment in hospital. But often by the time it becomes clear that a person has consumed methanol, they might have already slipped into a coma.
That's so interesting. I had no idea about any of that to do with methanol. I guess my number one question now is how does methanol then end up in someone's drink.
Yeah, So, in terms of the case we're going to explore today, this story that's been dominating headlines there is a lot we don't know. It hasn't been confirmed that this incident is a methanol poisoning event, but it is suspected to be the case. In terms of what we know about methanol more broadly, is that it is used as a cheap and easy to access alternative to drinking alcohol in some parts of the world. So health experts suggest that sometimes it's illicitly mixed into more expensive alcohol.
So you know, a bartender might some methanol with some vodka or a spirit so that they can make that spirit last longer, go further, so bars and clubs can ultimately sell more drinks and make more money. That's why some of the advice that you might have seen around methanol poisoning or about avoiding it is avoiding mixed drinks and spirits, buying sealed drinks from bottle shops instead, and just being really careful about where that drink has come from.
So if you saw a drink getting made at a bar, that's different to kind of I guess going to a bottle shop and buying a sealed can.
Well, I had no idea about this. I think when I heard about this story, I had presumed that someone had intentionally poisoned a whole bunch of people. I know you've said that we don't know all of the details yet, but are you saying that there's a possibility that a bar just used methanol as a cheaper alternative to alcohol, not knowing that they were perhaps going to be poisoning a lot of people.
Well, I think that there are two elements to your question, Billy, that kind of can both be true, in that it could be that a bar or the hostel in question has used methanol as a means to kind of sell drinks more cheaply. But the idea that a hospitality provider wouldn't know about the dangers of methanol is maybe a
little bit of a harder cell. It's highly likely that whoever is involved in this, if it is a methanol poisoning, it's highly unlikely that they didn't understand that methanol is potentially toxic to humans.
Yes, so they were probably very aware of the consequences that using methanol would have had, but it wasn't necessarily an intentional killing of people.
Yeah, and we will touch on this a little bit more later. But in terms of the victims. So there have been six people who have died so far from the same believed poisoning in this town in Lao, and five of six of them are women. And what the experts say about methanol poisoning is it often has a lot to do with the size, the makeup, the metabolism
of the person who is consuming the methanol. So you know, this is obviously speaking broadly, but women will be more impacted or impacted differently by certain alcohols and certainly methanol. And the argument I suppose is that women are more vulnerable to becoming extremely ill from methanol.
We'll be back with the deep dive in just a moment, but first here is a quick message from our sponsor. Okay, so let's talk about the incident in Lao. It was this time a week ago that we started hearing about two Ossie teens who had been hospitalized for suspected methanol poisoning. Do we know where they got sick?
Yes, So we first heard this story from three AW that's a nine owned Melbourne based radio station, and they reported that these two nineteen year olds from Melbourne, Hollybowls and Bianca Jones, had been hospitalized after a night out. They were staying in a hostel in the tourist town of vang Vien that's two hours outside Lao's capital, Vien Tienne. Now everyone involved in the suspected poisoning was also staying
at this hostel. The Ossie teen's families confirmed to media last week the girls were being treated in separate hospitals in Thailand for this suspected poisoning default. The Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed that it had been providing help to these families, and then, very sadly, on Thursday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanezi confirmed Bianca Jones had died. He called it
a terrible and cruel loss. Her family provided a statement to The Herald's Son, the Melbourne based newspaper, saying Bianca was quote surrounded by love when she passed away in Thailand, and they said, we are comforted by the knowledge that her incredible spirit touched so many lives during her time with us.
And then on Friday night news broke that a second Australian had died. What do we know about her death exactly?
So Friday evening we heard this terrible news of a second death in relation to a suspected methanol poisoning in Lao. Like her friend Bianka Jones, Holly bowls tied after this suspected poisoning, also in a Thai hospital. A statement from the nineteen year old's family said, it is with broken hearts and we are so sad to say that our beautiful girl Holly is now at peace. Holly was living her best life, traveling through Southeast Asia, meeting new friends and enjoying incredible experiences.
I get chills hearing you read out that statement. You can't even imagine what the families are going throughout the moment.
Yeah, it's just horrific. And I've been the nineteen year old in Southeast Asia. I went to Lao at the same age and had an amazing time and met wonderful people from all over the world. It's such a rite of passage to go on those holidays and to find your independence in that way, and just a turn of events that no one could have imagined.
There have also been several other deaths, all tourists, as you said before, were staying at the same hostel in Lao. Do we know about them?
Okay, yep. So there are the six tourists in total who have died. We've got the two young Ausi's Holly in Bianca. There's also a twenty eight year old British woman, two Danish women aged nineteen and twenty, and one fifty seven year old American man. They have all passed away. A New Zealander is also believed to be among several others who were hospitalized with suspected methanol poisoning, all staying
at that hostel. Local media over in New Zealand confirmed that that person did return home yesterday, but it's not clear how many others are sick, how serious their conditions may be. Last week there were media reports on the ground of at least ten people who were in hospital. Again, we just don't know for sure the scale of how serious their conditions may be, so how unwell everyone is, and if all of these people were spiked with methanol.
We do know that they were staying at the Nana backpackers hostel before they became sick, and this hostel, Dell is now kind of at the center of inquiries.
I want to turn to the investigation side of things. What has the response been like on the ground in Lao. Have we heard from the government or the policer.
We have now, but there has been some criticism surrounding this response, so on the ground in vang Vieng and more broadly from the national government. We did get a statement on Saturday from the Lao government, but that was the first that we'd officially heard from the government, and police have been accused of failing to be transparent on
their inquiries, of not acting quickly enough. The Foreign Affairs Ministry in Lao did release that statement on Saturday, saying it was profoundly saddened by the deaths of foreign tourists and that authorities were quote conducting investigations to find causes of the incident and to bring the perpetrators to justice in accordance with the law. Mark Jones, he's the father
of that Australian teenager Bianca who sadly passed away. We had previously called for more action from authorities before we got that statement.
I would like to take this opportunity to urge the allow government to investigate this to the forced extent. We can't have the passing outed order not lead the change to protect others.
Have you heard anything from the hostel so the BBC reported on Monday the hostel has been closed and a nearby bar, which is called JD's, has also been raided. Now, for all intents and purposes, the owners the operators of these venues have denied any involvement any wrongdoing, have denied
serving any illegal or homemade alcohol. There are reports that this hostel in question, though, gives guests a free shot of alcohol when they check in, so I suppose there are questions now about where that alcohol comes from, what that alcohol actually is. The hostel has, of course, as mentioned,
denied serving any illegal beverage. The owners of the hostel were arrested on Friday and taken into custody for questioning, but no charges have been laid, so it's not clear if police are just questioning them as part of their investigations or if those hostel owners are suspects. The Associated Press has reportedly spoken with local police who told them that a number of people had been detained. But again we are waiting on details and there's still so much we just don't know.
What about the Australian government, what role do they play in the investigation here?
So we know from defat as mentioned earlier, they're providing assistance to the two families of the Australian women, and that will include assistants to bring the girls back to Australia so to recover Holly and Bianca's bodies bring them home for a funeral. Here nine has reported that officers from the Australian Federal Police are conducting their own inquiries on the ground in Thailand and Lao now. On the traveler side of things for any Aussies heading to Lao,
Defat did update it's smart Traveler website last week. The travel advice for Australians heading to Lao now includes a warning that the dangerous chemical methanol may be present in spirit based drinks. So it says Australians have been victims of suspected cases of methanol poisoning through consuming alcoholic drinks, So just a warning for travelers to be extra aware if they are heading to Lao on Friday night. The Prime Minister said this should have been a trip filled
with joy and wonderful memories. He called it beyond sad that it is not to be true, and Albaneze said the government would continue supporting these families of the young Australian women and working with local authorities. They are Melbourne girls, so we've heard from the Victorian Premiers into Alan she expressed her condolences on x She described the situation as devastating and said she was thinking of everyone who loved Holly and Bianca.
I also saw a vigil in Melbourne over the weekend. What has the community response to the deaths of these two girls men.
Yeah, we've seen a really huge outpouring of tributes both online and in person. That was as vigil on Sunday, as you mentioned, Billy, which was attended by around one hundred people. Now we've also learned that Holly and Bianca were really keen footy players, loved their Aussie Rules and they were part of the Bomars Football Club, so that's their local club based in the southern suburbs of Melbourne. Players, coaches, officials and other community representatives have all sort of banded
together to pay tribute to these two young women. They won the premiership for their club in twenty twenty two, so the flag from that win has been flown at half mast, the club said in a statement as a sign of solidarity and unity and in memory of both Holly and Bianca, our women's team, have started tying blue and yellow ribbons the club colors in and around their homes and throughout the community. The girls jerseys are being retired by the club, and they've been remembered as skillful players.
But there is a little bit of insight into what they were like as people in these state from the club that I just wanted to share with you. So, the club has described Holly as quiet and unassuming. Quote she didn't crave attention, yet her kindness, grace, and beautiful soul made her someone everyone admired and respected. They said that Bianca's infectious charm and tenacity made her a fondly regarded teammate and friend. Her smile, exuberance, and happy nature
made her a delight to be around. Now, Billy, this story is obviously continuing to evolve by the day, and as we learn more about the circumstances surrounding these deaths, we will continue to keep you updated over on the daily Ods.
They sound like two amazing girls who the community were very lucky to have such a devastating story. And like you said, Emma, so many of us have been those nineteen year old girls just traveling the world and you never expect anything like this to happen exactly. Thank you so much for explaining today. Thank you so much, Billy, and thank you so much for listening to this episode
of The Daily os. A bit of a heavy one today, but we hope that we were able to break that down for you and answer some of the questions that you might have had when you have been seeing that story around. Thank you so much, and we'll be back again tomorrow. My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a
proud Arunda Bungelung Kalkuton woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations.
We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.