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Wednesday, April 23, 2003
Toxic ‘buriring’ kills 4th child in 2 days
CEBU -- Just after three children died for reportedly eating puffer fish, another girl was poisoned in Alaska, Mambaling, Cebu City Monday afternoon.
Genalyn Garcia, three years old, had just eaten a fish locally known as buriring for lunch last Monday.
Around 5 p.m., she told her father Renato that she felt dizzy. Nearly an hour later, she became numb and later died.
Her neighbors, Roberta and George Carulasan, were rushed to the Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC) yesterday morning after Roberta, 68, felt she could no longer move.
They all suspected that the buriring they ate for lunch the day before caused their numbness.
It was Roberta was the one who prepared the buriring and gave it to all the neighbors.
Seeing the effect the fish had on the neighbors, the other residents of Sitio Nava, Alaska, Mambaling checked in at the CCMC as well for fear of getting poisoned.
The poisoning shocked them, saying they have been eating the fish for as long as they can remember and nothing had ever happened to them.
Fredo Racal, a 48-year-old fisherman, said there was just something wrong with the way the fish was cooked because he also ate buriring earlier that day and nothing happened to him.
He said Roberta probably did not take out the internal organs properly and left the poisonous parts in.
After Genalyn’s death last Monday, Roberta and her son George complained of discomforts.
Roberta told her other son Jenaro that she could no longer move, while George continued to vomit, prompting them to head to the hospital.
Since they also ate the buriring, Roberta’s daughter Maricel, 23, grandsons Leonardo, six, and Cerito, eight, and neighbors also decided to check in.
Others who were brought to the CCMC were Marinela dela Cerna, four; Ledovina dela Cerna, 66; Dreneb dela Cerna, 18; Manito dela Cerna, 12; and Genalyn’s younger sister Geneva, two.
Gov. Pablo Garcia suggested Tuesday that the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (Bfar) 7 issue an advisory to identify poisonous fish and those that are fit for human consumption.
The advisory should include pictures to help people distinguish the different varieties of edible marine life.
He noted, though, that some fish and seafood, and even agricultural products like cassava (kamoteng kahoy), become poisonous only when prepared a certain way.
However, officials of the Bfar 7 are not sure what family of fish the buriring falls under.
According to Bfar 7 aquacultural technologist and public information officer Edsel Ensomo, there has been confusion among fisherfolk as to the difference between buriring and butiti.
Ensomo said that everywhere else, buriring is just another term for butiti.
It is only in Cebu that there is a difference, he said.
While they are sure that the butiti is classified under the family of the puffer fish, he said they are not sure if the buriring is related to the puffer fish.
He said a false puffer fish called the mimic filefish has similar physical characteristics but is not poisonous. The filefish belongs to a different family.
“It is possible that the locals call this the buriring. The puffer fish might have gotten mixed with the filefish,” Ensomo told reporters.
Ensomo also said that all puffer fishes have a tetradotoxin, which disrupts nerve transmission.
When this happens, the person experiences numbness in the lips that eventually leads to paralysis and death.
Cooking cannot destroy the tetradotoxin and the effects of the poison can begin as early as 10 to 45 minutes after eating.
In severe cases, death can occur within six to 24 hours after ingestion.
To date, no anti-toxin has been found for the tetradotoxin, which is found in the fish’s skin, blood, eyes, liver, kidneys and intestines.
While tetradotoxin is present in all puffer fishes, it is possible that the fish eaten by the victims had a higher concentration of the poison, since tetradotoxin level is especially high during the fish’s reproductive season between December and June.
The puffer fish is also called blowfish, balloon fish, globefish, swellfish or toadfish.
But without a sample of the fish that caused the death of Garcia and three other children from Caubian Island, Lapu-Lapu City, Bfar 7 cannot be sure if buriring was the culprit.
Bfar 7 Director Corazon Corrales sent a team to Lapu-Lapu City yesterday afternoon to investigate and, if possible, get a sample of the fish to identify its classification.
She said a laboratory test will determine if cyanide caused their death and not fish toxins.
“Right now, we cannot yet conclude if it was indeed the fish that caused the poisoning. But since we already know what happened to these children, we are discouraging the public from eating the fish,” Corrales said. MEA/With KMF
(April 23, 2003 issue)
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