One year ago, Kent local Simone White passed away from methanol poisoning whilst in holiday in Laos. Today, her friends are campaigning to spread awareness of methanol poisoning, its symptoms, treatments and how it can be avoided.
Cameron Tucker reports, talking to Bethany Clarke.
00:00We went to our hostel bar for some happy hour drinks and it turned out that those drinks
00:05contained a deadly substance called methanol and it's found in counterfeit alcohol and obviously
00:13at the time it was marketed as free shots so we could choose between vodka or whiskey
00:18and lots of people drank there and it's not uncommon in Asia, Southeast Asia, to get these
00:27happy hours and unfortunately 12 hours later we could start to feel the effects and 24
00:34hours later Simone was gasping for air, unable to talk to me and really she was going into
00:40respiratory distress and ultimately she ended up in a coma and her mum had to fly over from
00:48the UK and switch off Simone's life support on the 21st of November so we're nearly a
00:54year on.
00:57It's such a glib question to ask but what has the last year been like for you and Simone's
01:02family?
01:03Obviously just horrendous, I mean it's one thing to lose your best friend and one thing
01:13to lose your daughter but it's another thing having her face all over the newspapers and
01:20having to come back to the UK again.
01:23Obviously I was living over in Australia at the time and my whole kind of trajectory had
01:27to change for a number of months which I mean that was the least of our worries really.
01:33But yeah, trying to educate people as well it's just really hard and you know we've started
01:40up this campaign the Simone White methanol awareness campaign really because we knew
01:46that people weren't actually aware of this problem really until it happened and even now
01:52there's still going to be people that aren't aware of methanol poisoning and that's really
01:56why we're still going with this messaging of don't drink spirits when you're in places
02:01that you're unfamiliar with and we had a case in Brazil just a couple of weeks ago where
02:07three people died so there's a lot more that governments can be doing really to try and
02:12prevent these poisons from happening and a lot of the time the antidotes are also not
02:16there so even if you wanted to try and treat it a lot of the time it's quite difficult to
02:21do that without the antidote.
02:23Tell us a little bit about Simone as a person, what she was like.
02:29She was just one of those people that always had plans, very busy, very active, lots of
02:35different sports, so many different groups of friends and we always tried to kind of
02:40amalgamate our friendship groups so that we could do things together which was nice.
02:44So I know a lot of her friends and you know she knew a lot of mine and we just did so many
02:49holidays together over the years we'd kind of done a lot of Southeast Asia and these
02:53two countries Cambodia and Laos kind of our last two to tick off and she had a list of
02:59countries that she still wanted to go to and I think it was like less than five like
03:04she'd really done like a lot of the world already even though she'd only just turned 28.
03:09She just achieved so much in such a short life in a way you know she had a flat she'd recently
03:17bought that and she'd just done so well.
03:19She was a lawyer and yeah she was just the best friend that I could have hoped for really.
03:27And I think that pull that she had like you said to bring so many people together around
03:32her that's really clear in the campaign and that you set up the Simone White methanol
03:37awareness campaign.
03:39You spoke a little bit about it a few moments ago but give us a bit of a wider view of what
03:43the campaign's hoping to achieve.
03:49There's a lot of aims really with the campaign and we've achieved one of them.
03:53So that was getting the education into schools in England and Wales.
03:57So methanol poisoning will be taught in England and Wales from September 2026.
04:03We've got Margaret McKee who lost her daughter Kirsty McKee to methanol poisoning in Bali.
04:07She's trying to get this education into Scotland.
04:11And really we're trying to get airports and airlines to play their part as well to try and educate
04:17people that are flying to destinations that are at risk to try and educate on the plane and in airports.
04:25You know signage things like that because Australia is doing a job of that already.
04:29So I suppose we can see how it's working here where I am and I think that kind of should be across the board in every country really.
04:41So it's really just trying to think holistically across the board how we can get the message out
04:47and trying to get governments to create the resources that Australia have already been doing.
04:52So the posters, the leaflets, things that people can actually display so that there's a visual sign that people can see.
05:00Oh, yes, I know the symptoms now of methanol poisoning because it's really those symptoms that are so important to know
05:06because they're so similar to a hangover, but are so lethal.
05:09And so it's things like the vision loss and the breathlessness, things that just would never really accompany a hangover, but everything else.
05:20So the vomiting, the nausea, the headaches, sensitivity to light, things like that.
05:26You know, you could get that with a hangover, which is why a lot of the time people try and sleep methanol poisoning off because they're so tired from it.
05:33And unfortunately, that's the way that they end up passing away because like Greta and Arno, who passed away tragically six weeks after the incident in Laos,
05:43they unfortunately drank some limoncello from a restaurant, which is actually still open.
05:49And and they passed away because they just stayed in their room trying to sleep it off.
05:54And that's just an all too familiar tale.
05:57What more needs to be done? What would you like our government in the UK and governments internationally to be doing as part of raising awareness and and making a real tangible difference to to people traveling to these countries going forward?
06:14I think there's just so much that can be done.
06:18And we really just starting off. We've got a little bit of education from next year, but really everything else needs to be targeted.
06:26So, as I say, the airports could be doing a lot more with signage.
06:30The airlines could be potentially talking about it when people are flying to those high risk countries and including something in their in flight magazine about the risk of methanol poisoning,
06:44because we're actually suggesting that people buy duty free before they go, because we know that that's a lot safer than things that could potentially be counterfeit when you're out in these countries.
06:54And also it acts as a bit of an antidote. So if you think you've got methanol poisoning, the best thing that you can start to do is drink a small amount of good quality alcohol.
07:05So around, depending on your weight, around 30 to 40 milliliters an hour, and that will give you time to get to a hospital before that methanol is broken down into formic acid,
07:15which is the thing that's sort of eating into your organs and making you feel so unwell and causing the optic nerve damage,
07:23which is what we've seen in Callum McDonald, who tragically went blind in this same loud poisoning.
07:29So he drank the night before us and he's now doing a lot of advocacy work.
07:34Like you said, it's going to be taught in schools from September 2026.
07:39There's been an influencer campaign as well recently.
07:43There's obviously the work that you and the family and everyone to do with the campaign has been doing in the last year.
07:49What's next? And also, what would you think that Simone would think of all this awareness and all this work being done in her name?
08:02I think she would think that it's necessary.
08:04And I suppose part of the reason that I'm doing it is that I know she was one of those very proactive people that would be doing it for me had it been me.
08:11So she was very big on charity work and trying to do the best that she could.
08:19And that's that's what we're trying to do, really.
08:22So, yeah, we would like to actually create a global initiative so that anybody in any country could access a website that's purely about methanol poisoning and provide support to the victims,
08:36the families and just any additional information that they might really want and potentially support groups as well.
08:43So we've got quite a wide community of people now who have either experienced it or they've lost a friend to it.
08:50And we're all coming together and we're trying to do something that's going to be holistic and worldwide.
08:57So we're just in the initial planning stages of that at the moment.
09:00Bethany, thank you so much for your time this morning, this evening on your end.
09:05That's my question. Is there anything that we might have missed out on or anything that you want to add?
09:09The only other thing we have started to do is the Change.org petition, which I didn't actually mention,
09:13but it's a Canadian and a UK and Australia petition.
09:18And that's to try and push for the education in the airports and airlines.
09:22So I suppose the only sort of call to action for me would be for everybody to sign that Change.org petition
09:27because it will make a difference getting those signatures, just every signature counts.
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