A British couple were among seven tourists whose deaths in Thailand have been linked to a toxic bed bug pesticide.Pensioners George Everitt, 78, and his wife Eileen, 73, from Boston, Lincolnshire, were found dead in their room at the Downtown Inn in Chiang Mai.
An undercover investigation revealed shocking evidence linking the deaths between January and March after all seven stayed at or used facilities at the hotel.
Police initially dismissed the mystery deaths as a terrible case of food poisoning caused by eating toxic seaweed from a stall at a bazaar.
Most had very similar symptoms, including myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart, suspected to have been caused by food or water contamination.
Thai authorities have continually maintained the deaths linked to the three star hotel were coincidence despite repeated claims of a cover-up by families of the victims.
A probe by New Zealand 60 Minutes has revealed the hotel rooms had been sprayed with a potentially lethal toxin called pyrophus, which has been banned from indoor use in many other countries.
Reporters posing as hotel guests secretly took samples from the fifth floor room where New Zealand backpacker Sarah Carter, 23, died in February.
Test results found small traces of an insecticide called chlorpyrifos (CY) inside the room - a chemical that is used to get rid of bed bugs.
Thai police recently raided the company in charge of eradicating insects at the hotel and Chiang Mai’s Head of Public Health suspects the pest controllers could have made a mistake.
‘It's possible that they mixed together the wrong chemicals,’ Dr Surasing Visaruthrat said.
Fears that some Thai hotels could be using unsafe chemicals first came to light two years ago when American Jill St Onge and Norwegian Julie Bergheim died at a resort.
Their symptoms, beginning with severe chest pain, and progressing to vomiting and fainting, were almost identical to the seven other tourists who died between January and March. Read More
