When Jhudong Police Precinct in Hsinchu County’s Jhudong Township (竹東) received a “110” emergency call on Wednesday last week from a caller claiming that his family was going insane, they thought the man was playing a prank.
Despite their doubts, police rushed to the address and found the family suffering from a serious case of carbon monoxide poisoning, which had caused them to feel dizzy, nauseated and deranged.
All four people recovered after treatment at a local hospital.
Jhudong Precinct Police Chief Pu Ming-yi (蒲銘義) said he thought the caller was drunk, joking or calling in a false alarm when he said: “Our whole family is going insane, please come and save us.”
To be on the safe side, Pu took two officers and drove to the house, which belongs to a family surnamed Peng (彭).
The police found two brothers in their 20s, and their parents, in their 50s, in a dazed and confused state. They were unable to stand and had to lean against furniture to avoid falling down.
“The speech of all four was slurred and we could not make sense of what they were saying,” Pu said.
The police report said the younger Peng brother took a bath that evening and shortly afterward the whole family felt dizzy, which prompted the elder brother to call the hotline.
Pu checked the house and found all the doors and windows were shut because of cold weather. He also found the balcony, where the gas water heater was located, was not properly ventilated.
Doctors later confirmed that the family had inhaled excessive amounts of carbon monoxide.
“The symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning may include headaches, nausea, vomiting, shortness of breath, confusion and neurological dysfunction. If victims are not quickly removed from a problem area, it may result in loss of consciousness and death,” said Chou Chun-kuang (周春光), a neurologist at the county’s Ton-Yen General Hospital.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,