Dangerous Japanese ‘Detergent Suicide’ Technique Creeps Into U.S.

A suicide technique that mixes household chemicals to produce a deadly hydrogen sulfide gas became a grisly fad in Japan last year. Now it’s slowly seeping into the United States over the internet, according to emergency workers, who are alarmed at the potential for innocent causalities.

At least 500 Japanese men, women and children took their lives in the first half of 2008 by following instructions posted on Japanese websites, which describe how to mix bath sulfur with toilet bowl cleaner to create a poisonous gas. One site includes an application to calculate the correct portions of each ingredient based on room volume, along with a PDF download of a ready-made warning sign to alert neighbors and emergency workers to the deadly hazard.

The first sign that the technique was migrating to the United States came in August, when a 23-year-old California man was found dead in his car behind a Pasadena shopping center. The VW Beetle’s doors were locked, the windows rolled up and a warning sign had been posted in one of the windows. Police and firefighters evacuated the shopping crew before a hazmat crew in chemical suits extracted the body and began cleaning up the grisly scene.

Then in December, emergency workers responding to a call at Lake Allatoona in Bartow County, Georgia, found a similar scene. Inside the car — along with the body — were two buckets containing a yellow substance. A note on the window said "Caution" and identified the chemical compound by name.

Nobody connected the cases until last month, when a Texas surgeon realized that a new and dangerous suicide method was making the rounds. Dr. Paul Pepe, chief of emergency medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center, warned emergency workers that they could become innocent casualties of the technique if they’re not careful. Other experts agree.

"The normal response for an EMS, is they’re going to break open the window," says August Vernon, assistant coordinator for the Forsyth County Office of Emergency Management, who was consulted by the Department of Homeland Security on the danger this week. "And that’s a pretty normal call: someone unconscious inside the car. Fortunately, those people left notes, which is pretty unusual and a good thing."

"Eventually," he adds, "someone isn’t going to leave a note."

The American version of the method substitutes a common insecticide for the bath sulfur used in the Japanese recipe; bath sulfur isn’t available in the United States. But the tweak does nothing to make the gas less dangerous for people nearby. In one of the Japanese cases last year, 90 residents in an apartment building were sickened when a 14-year-old girl used hydrogen sulfide (H2S) to take her life.

The so-called "detergent suicides" in Japan sparked considerable and ongoing interest on the Alt.Suicide Usenet groups, where people considering suicide share tips and tricks. This week, one depressed man wrote of his plan to release hydrogen sulfide gas in his car while driving, in the hope that he’ll lose consciousness and crash — making it look like an accident.

"I got the idea to use hydrogen sulfide poisoning by reading of the tremendous success (for lack of a better word) that the Japanese people have had with it," he wrote on Monday. "It is their most common suicide method. I understand that the method smells but I have found the stench of failure in my life as well."

When other newsgroup denizens pointed out the recklessness of his plan, he gave it up as too risky to innocent bystanders. After exploring other techniques, the man announced on Wednesday that he decided he’d rather live.

"With months of research I have discovered that there is no ‘easy’ or ‘painless’ or ‘quick’ way to die," he wrote. "So, from here on out I am going to pick up the pieces to my life! Maybe you should too."

(Top photo: A hazmat team responds to a chemical suicide near a Pasadena shopping center. Courtesy Terry Miller, Beacon Media News; Middle photo: Police officers in protective gear enter an apartment in Konan, southern Japan Thursday, April 24, 2008. A Japanese girl gassed herself to death by mixing laundry detergent with cleanser, releasing fumes that sickened 90
people in her apartment house. AP Photo/Kyodo News)

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Fox News, The Daily-Tribune, Wired, Beacon Media News contributed to this post.

Internet schoolgirl is latest victim of bathroom poison suicide cult

More than 120 people fled their homes yesterday when a 14-year-old Japanese schoolgirl took her own life by mixing a deadly cocktail of household products and creating clouds of highly toxic gas.

Her death, just a few days into the new school year, was the latest tragedy in what some in Japan see as an epidemic of copycat suicides among the young and internet-obsessed.

The girl’s death brought to 70 the number of young people in Japan who have brewed the fatal concoction and killed themselves with hydrogen sulphide gas this year.

Police fear that worse is to come: one of the products used to generate the gas has sold out in many stores in the past few weeks.

Despite Japan’s extremely high suicide rate, the worst among developed countries, the use of hydrogen sulphide as a means of suicide has been virtually unknown. Its sudden popularity has baffled experts, although many believe that it represents a significant attitude change because of the danger the method poses to innocent people.

The poisonous gas, which lingers in the room where it is produced, remains potent long after the suicide. In some cases the person finding the body has been taken seriously ill; a mother who discovered her son breathing the gas also died from the fumes.

Ryoji Matoba, a specialist in forensic medicine and suicides, said: “I suppose each generation has its popular method of suicide. I fear very much that people will copy what they have seen on the news. The people who do this believe, wrongly, that they will die still looking all right, but this gas turns the body brown and green.”

Despite efforts by the authorities to crack down hard on Japan’s many suicide websites, the victims were all led through their final moments of life with the aid of step-by-step guides readily available online in Japanese. The sites explain which cleaning products and bath additives to buy, how to mix them, and how quickly the resulting toxic gas will take effect.

Yesterday, after police evacuated every resident from the five-storey apartment block in the southern town of Konan where the girl was found, they discovered the macabre calling card that attested to the role of the websites.

Pinned outside the bathroom where the girl died was a poster that has begun to appear with grim regularity across the country: “Do not open! Poison gas being generated on the other side of this door!” The poster, always in the same vocabulary and typeface, is available for download on the most visited suicide sites – an apparent effort by the website creators to make the process easier.

Japan has been an unhappy leader of so-called internet suicides. Four years ago a spate of suicide pacts began that had been forged online between strangers who would arrange to meet and end their lives together.

Plague of death

— World Health Organization figures show that Japan has the second-highest suicide rate in the Group of Eight nations, beaten only by Russia

— At least 30,000 people have killed themselves in Japan every year since 1998

— The 1998 peak in suicides coincided with a nationwide economic slump

— Last year the Japanese Cabinet approved measures to cut suicides by tackling unemployment, promoting counselling and filtering suicide websites

The Times of London and Fox News Contributed to this report.