Toxic coconut wine leaves 11 dead, hundreds sick in Philippines

A tainted batch of coconut wine left 11 people dead and sent hundreds of Christmas revellers to the hospital over the weekend, according to health officials in the Philippines.

The tainted coconut wine was consumed in Laguna and Quezon provinces on the Philippines’ main island, according to the state-run Philippines News Agency. The potent liquor is thought to have contained methanol, a poisonous alcohol that can cause blindness and death in humans.

Two people died and a total of 265 people were hospitalized in Laguna alone, according to a news release by the Philippines Department of Health. Many of the victims had a history of drinking coconut wine, a festive drink commonly referred to as lambanog. The drink is distilled from coconut sap and often has an alcohol content of 35 to 40 per cent.

Officials say they’ve traced the poisoning back to a generic-brand distillery in the Laguna area. They suspect the coconut wine was tainted by methanol left over from the distilling process.

“Lambanog poisoning is caused by residual methanol, which in high levels becomes highly toxic for humans. Methanol is a naturally occurring substance present during the distilling process that should be separated and removed thereafter,” Health Secretary Francisco T. Duque III said in a statement.

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Laguna has temporarily banned the sale of coconut wine. Police have also shut down the distillery where the tainted batch is suspected of being produced.

The distillery owner surrendered to authorities on Monday and pledged to co-operate with the investigation, the Philippines News Agency reports.

Unregulated production and sales of lambanog are common in the Philippines, and it is often made illegally with dangerous additives, Reuters reports.

Twenty-one people died after consuming tainted coconut wine last year.

— With files from Reuters