Government officials stated that methanol – a toxic alcohol used industrially as pesticides, solvents, and alternative fuel sources, has been detected in the blood samples of all 21 youngsters found dead at the Enyobeni tavern in the Eastern Cape last month, as reported by The Citizen.
Also read: Twenty dead in Eastern Cape tavern tragedy, cause still unknown.
According to a media briefing on Tuesday, deputy director-general, Dr Litha Matiwane of the Eastern Cape health department for clinical services announced that these findings were qualitative results and thus can’t yet be used to verify the exact cause of the deaths.
“We just have the qualitative results that says all 21 of them had methanol in their blood, but we still need to get the quantitative levels which will then tell us whether these were at lethal or non-lethal levels as well,” says Matiwane.
Daily Maverick reports that the first three samples for blood alcohol levels, carbon monoxide levels and qualitative methanol levels conclude that the victims’ blood alcohol and carbon monoxide levels were not lethal.
Matiwane said that blood alcohol levels on the victims ranged from 0.05 grams to 0.26 grams per 100ml of blood. This was not conclusive of lethal toxicology and these might not have been final cause of death.
The second layer of results that came through was that of carbon monoxide – an ordourless, colourless gas formed by the incomplete combustion of fuels – was also ranging from 3.3% to 21% saturation of haemoglobin and therefore not fatal.
He said under normal circumstances it was expected that toxicology lethal levels would be above 50%, “so again the understanding is that this might not yet be the final cause of… lethal toxicology”.
“In summary… we have now moved from the point where we had said yes we have excluded the stampede but now we do have initial results from the toxicology lab. However at this point in time there are no conclusive results that this is a lethal concoction that we are dealing with.”
He explained that they “are looking for other things like by-products of methanol,” by analysing the gastric contents of the deceased in order to obtain a better picture of what happened.
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