Could stonefish have done this?

Zubaidah Nazeer, New Paper 28 Dec 07;

HER mouth swelled and her lips started to peel.

She saw the doctor eight times in a month to find out what happened.

Madam Lim now thinks it has something to do with a stonefish dish she had at a seafood restaurant on 24 Nov.

Stonefish have spikes containing venom and can cause intense pain when stepped on.

But experts say the venom is destroyed if the fish is cooked.

According to a Shin Min Daily News report yesterday, Madam Lim and her family had dinner at a seafood restaurant in Bukit Timah on 24 Nov.

The report did not name the restaurant.

Attempts by The New Paper to contact Madam Lim were unsuccessful.

Curious about the Hong Kong-style steamed stonefish dish, the 30-year-old housewife ordered it despite its hefty price tag of $105 per kilogram.

She told Shin Min: 'My husband didn't eat the fish and my four-year-old daughter ate only the tail portion.

'I was the one who ate almost the entire portion of the fish.'

She claimed her symptoms started as soon as she got home.

Her throat felt dry and itchy and her entire mouth started swelling, she said. The area around her mouth also started going numb.

She said: 'My throat felt so dry, it felt like it was splitting open. I had to drink water every 10 minutes or else it would have been unbearable.'

She dismissed it as an allergic reaction to seafood.

But after three days, she felt it could be more than that so she saw a doctor.

In all, she made eight trips to the doctor in one month, costing her $150.

NEED MORE TESTS

She said: 'The doctor told me he needed to do more tests to make sure it was indeed the toxins from the stonefish causing these reactions.'

Added Madam Lim: 'It was my first time eating stonefish. When I ordered it, I didn't know that these fish had toxins.'

Anyone handling the fish has to be trained and wear thick gloves when removing the venomous dorsal spines.

They are cut off with a pair of scissors before the fish is cooked.

Madam Lim could not remember if the fish still had spikes on its back.

In an earlier report, Singapore General Hospital's Dr Teoh Lam-Chuan, chief of the hand surgery department said: 'There are several worldwide studies done which found out that the venom can be destroyed by heat.'

Professor Chou Loke Ming from NUS biological sciences department said the stonefish is harmful only if the venom is injected into the body.

'Cooking the stonefish destroys its venom,' he said

An employee at one restaurant selling stonefish told The New Paper that the dish is usually steamed or cooked and served in a thick, milky herbal soup. The restaurant has been selling the dish for about five years.

Up to 10 stonefishes are consumed each month. He claims none of his workers or his customers have fallen ill from eating or touching the stonefish.

Despite this, the restaurant has stopped selling the fish for about a month now because supply has dried up.

A check with the supplier of the stonefish confirmed this.

Mr Simon Loh, who works at the Unique Seafood market - which supplies stonefish to three restaurants in the Turf City area and three restaurants outside of it - said his centre has not had stonefish delivered to it for more than a month now.

He also said no one had come forward to say they fell ill from eating stonefish.

The only case he remembered was of a worker who got stung a few years ago while handling the fish but his pain was relieved immediately as they injected him with anti-venom on standby.

In 2002, there were five reports of men being stung by stonefish in the waters off Sentosa, Changi beach and St John's Island.

In 2005, one such incident was reported.

Recently, on 3 Nov, a Chinese national stepped on a stonefish as he was wading in the waters at Sentosa.