A 14-year-old Japanese girl killed herself by mixing laundry detergent with cleanser, releasing fumes that also sickened 90 people in her apartment block, police said yesterday as they grappled with a spate of similar suicides.
None of the sickened neighbors in Konan, southern Japan, was severely injured, although about 10 were hospitalized, authorities said. The deadly hydrogen sulfide gas escaped from the girl’s bathroom window and entered neighboring apartments.
The girl’s suicide on Wednesday night was part of a rapidly expanding string of similar deaths that experts say have been encouraged by Internet suicide sites. A 31-year-old man outside Tokyo killed himself inside a car early yesterday by mixing detergent and bath salts, police said.
A local police spokesman refused to give further details, but Kyodo news agency reported the man put a sign that read “Stay Away” on the car window.
The method has alarmed officials because of the danger that bystanders can be hurt.
“It’s easy and everyone can do it,” said Yasuaki Shimizu, director of Lifelink, a Tokyo-based group specializing in halting suicides. “Also there is a lot of information teaching people how to do it on the Internet.”
Police say they have not tallied the number of detergent-related suicides, but media reports suggest it has reached about 30 this year, including several cases in which others were also sickened.
The 14-year-old girl, whose name was not released by police, followed the pattern of other deaths.
She mixed detergent with a liquid cleanser in her bathroom, police said. The door was closed and she had affixed a sign on the outside warning: “Gas being emitted.”
Most of those sickened nearby complained of sore throats and about 30 people were evacuated to a nearby gymnasium.
Japan’s government has long battled to contain the country’s alarmingly high suicide rate. A total of 32,155 people killed themselves in 2006, giving the country the ninth highest rate in the world, government statistics showed.
Suicides first passed the 30,000 mark in 1998, near the height of an economic slump that left many bankrupt, jobless and desperate.
The government has earmarked ¥22.5 billion (US$220 million) for anti-suicide programs to help those with depression and other mental conditions.
Last year it set a goal of cutting the suicide rate by 20 percent in 10 years through steps such as reducing unemployment, boosting workplace counseling and filtering Web sites that promote suicide.
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