The Food and Drug Administration urged the public not to eat kinds of fish that they do not recognize after a man from northern Taiwan was hospitalized with pufferfish poisoning.
Writing in a blog post on April 30, the agency said: “The safest course is to avoid eating one’s own catch from the sea altogether and not to consume seafood of unknown origin.”
The pufferfish’s liver, ovaries, skin and muscles contain a neurotoxin 1,000 times more powerful than cyanide.
Photo: Huang Ming-tang, Taipei Times
Cooking does not rid the pufferfish of poison, because the substance can withstand high temperatures without losing its chemical stability, the agency said.
The toxin starts to take effect within about 10 to 15 minutes of being consumed, it said, adding that symptoms include numbness in the lips, tongue and extremities, headache, vertigo and nausea.
Severe pufferfish poisoning could result in difficulty breathing, a slow heart rate and death, the agency said.
The man sought treatment at a public hospital after eating the fish and showed some of the symptoms, so the hospital sent fecal samples to the agency for testing to identify the fish, it said.
A lab has identified the fish as Lagocephalus inermis, a type of pufferfish, the agency said, adding that there is no known antidote for the toxin.
It did not disclose what became of the man.
Pufferfish are known for rapidly inflating their bodies when threatened.
However, many pufferfish species that live in the waters surrounding Taiwan are difficult to identify by untrained eyes, the agency said.
If someone suspects they had been poisoned by something they ate, the agency could identify the species by chemical analysis of a stool sample, it said.
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