Poison Blowfish: A Deadly Dinner in Japan Puts 11 in the Hospital

Sushi is a del­i­cacy in Japan, and prob­a­bly the most famous Japan­ese food in Amer­ica. When­ever any­one hears sushi, they think of raw fish, and how adven­tur­ous (and healthy) it must be to eat fish uncooked. No one ever thinks it might be dangerous.

The one excep­tion to this is blow­fish. To any­one who’s ever lived in Japan or thought about going there, blow­fish is famous for its bor­der­line poi­so­nous prop­er­ties. All restau­rants that carry blow­fish need spe­cial chefs to pre­pare the fish just right, and if it’s not pre­pared cor­rectly it can poten­tially be poi­so­nous. Every­one tries blow­fish because of the poten­tial dan­ger and of course unique taste, but no expects to actu­ally get poisoned.

Both the Yomi­uri and the Asahi reported on the Blow­fish (fugu in Japan­ese) poi­son­ing incident:

Asahi: “Toyama: poi­soned while eat­ing blow­fish nabe, 2 peo­ple in crit­i­cal con­di­tion” On the evening of the 23^rd, 11 peo­ple were eat­ing blow­fish nabe at Kozushi, a sushi restau­rant in Toyama Pre­fec­ture. 9 of those peo­ple exhib­ited symp­toms of poi­son and were rushed to the hos­pi­tal, and 2 peo­ple were ren­dered unconscious.

Accord­ing to the Asahi, there were about 21 peo­ple eat­ing blow­fish nabe that night. 11 peo­ple were admit­ted to a nearby med­ical facil­ity, with symp­toms such as hav­ing trou­ble breath­ing. The cause of people’s sick­ness was that the part of the blow­fish that is poi­so­nous was not com­pletely removed, accord­ing to the poi­son con­trol cen­ter at the facil­ity. The sushi chef who pre­pared the blow­fish did have his sushi license.

Yomi­uri: “Toyama: 2 peo­ple ren­dered uncon­scious by poi­so­nous blow­fish nabe” Com­pared with the Asahi, the Yomi­uri dra­ma­tized the inci­dent of the poi­son­ing blow­fish. They said the 11 peo­ple emit­ting symp­toms of poi­son were rushed to 3 nearby hos­pi­tals. The symp­toms of poi­son were not only short­ness of breath, but also people’s mouths and faces going numb.

The Yomi­uri also men­tioned that the blow­fish pre­pared that morn­ing was from a dif­fer­ent fish mar­ket than what is usu­ally pur­chased. The Yomi­uri, along with the Asahi, pointed out that the sushi chef who pre­pared the blow­fish did have his license.

Nikkei: Swine Flu’s dis­mal sta­tis­tics The Nikkei did not report on the poi­son blow­fish inci­dent this morn­ing but instead ran a head­line about the swine flu in Japan and its dis­mal sta­tis­tics. Accord­ing to the Nikkei, when look­ing at the min­istry of Health and Human Welfare’s web­site, “1 in 14 peo­ple in Japan have been infected with the swine flu.” In regards to deaths, they said “1 in 14,000 will be killed by the swine flu.”

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