It's hoped a Newcastle nurse suffering severe health effects from drinking a cocktail contaminated with methanol can be flown to John Hunter Hospital, where she works, for treatment. Jamie Johnston, 25, was on holiday on the Indonesian island of Lombok when she consumed a drink of arak, a distilled palm wine.
Print page Email this Permalink ShareTwo weeks ago, a day after drinking the "jungle juice", she collapsed with renal failure at Denpasar Airport in Bali.
Ms Johnston slipped into a coma and has sustained brain scarring, leaving her struggling to speak.
She spent several days being treated in Bali before being evacuated to Darwin, and her mother now wants to bring her home to Newcastle.
Neither of the women had taken out travellers' insurance.
Four foreigners were among 25 people killed by a batch of methanol-tainted arak in Bali in 2009.
Toxicologist Dr Ian White, from Newcastle's Calvary Mater Hospital, says Ms Johnston's drink may not have been deliberately spiked.
He told 1233 ABC Newcastle's Jill Emberson methanol can be an unwanted by-product of a poor distillation process.
"When you make or distill your own alcohol it's possible for methanol to be produced as part of the distillation process, if you're not very careful with how you do it," Dr White explains.
"Methanol is similar to alcohol but it's slightly different chemically.
"It's used in paint and varnish removers and as an industrial solvent."
He says while in Australia methanol is mostly used in chemical labs, in the US it's used as an anti-freeze in windscreen-wiper solution, and they have many more cases of methanol poisoning there than we do here.
"It's a colourless, odourless liquid, you can't tell if it's in the drink that you're drinking," Dr White says.
"Initially, drinking methanol you get the same sorts of effects as drinking ethanol, so you get intoxicated."
But he says the problem with methanol is that hours later, enzymes in your body convert it into an acid, formic acid.
"And that acid is very potent, makes your whole body very acidic and damages organs in your body," the doctor says.
"In particular it can damage your kidneys and give you acute kidney failure, which I understand this girl has.
"It can damage your sight, it can damage your nerves from your eye and make you blind."
Dr White says some of the damage can be permanent, such as visual problems and brain injury, but much depends on the amount of methanol consumed.
"Essentially for most adults you could say that about 100 to 200ml of methanol is likely to be fatal," he says.
The toxicologist says there have been some methanol poisonings in Australia, mostly involving cultures with a tradition of distilling their own alcohol.
He recommends travellers stick to consuming alcohol from conventional, labelled bottles.
NSW Health Minister, Jillian Skinner, is trying to help Ms Johnston's mother get her daughter airlifted home to Newcastle.
"This is really important to get back home to treatment that you trust, close to family and friends," the Minister says.
"There was a cost getting her to Darwin and I'm seeing if we can help getting her back to John Hunter in Newcastle."
