Best friends Bianca Jones and Holly Bowles were on a dream holiday in South East Asia when they became desperately ill after consuming alcoholic drinks containing methanol – a toxic chemical often found in cleaning products .

The two 19-year-olds are now fighting for their lives in separate hospitals in Bangkok as their families endure a desperate bedside wait.

The incident prompted the government to update its travel advice for Laos, with website Smartraveller warning Australian tourists about the dangers of methanol poisoning.

“Several foreign nationals, including Australians, were victims in November 2024 of suspected cases of methanol poisoning through the consumption of alcoholic beverages,” Smartraveller’s latest update reads.

“Be aware of the potential risks, especially with spirits, including cocktails.”

The Smartraveller website then directs potential tourists to the Laos travel advice “safety” section and a page about “partying safely.”

The updated travel advice comes as a forensics expert issued a chilling fact about the toxic chemical.

Drinking just 25 to 90ml of methanol can be fatal, but Professor David Ranson from Monash University’s department of forensic medicine said that because methanol is “odorless, colorless and tasteless”, there really is no ” no way’ that the average traveler can tell if it’s in their drink or not.

Professor Ranson spoke to Sky News Australia about why methanol poisoning is so dangerous and how it can be treated.

“Methanol is actually a very, very nasty alcohol agent … but the problem is less with the methanol itself — which can be an intoxicant, for sure,” he said.

“(The problem is) it breaks down in the body, as it is metabolized, into two very nasty chemicals; one is formaldehyde – the type of chemical used in embalming and things like that – and then to formic acid.

“And formic acid actually kills cells in the body, and that leads to a whole variety of symptoms. They have abdominal pain, difficulty breathing, chest pain, and often vision problems.

“And indeed, they can go blind.”

The former head of forensic services at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine said that to treat the methanol poisoning suffered by Ms Jones and Ms Bowles, doctors would have to prevent their bodies from breaking down the methanol.

Surprisingly, Professor Ranson said this could be achieved with the standard form of alcohol in drinks.

“What you want to do is block the breakdown of methanol by the body, so the methanol will be excreted from the body naturally,” he said.

“Methanol is broken down by alcohol dehydrogenase… there are some drugs that can actually block that enzyme.

“In fact, ethanol itself – the alcohol we normally have in drinks – is also an agent that can be used to treat methanol poisoning, certainly in the early stages.

“But at the end of the day, it’s supportive therapy. It is often kidney dialysis. There’s a whole variety of things that need to be done to get methanol out of the body and stop it from turning into these very nasty byproducts.”

Despite its toxicity, methanol is sometimes added to contraband alcoholic beverages as a cheap alternative to ethanol.

Professor Ranson said while this was happening in places “all over the world”, there had been a cluster of cases in South East Asia in recent years.

“These outbreaks are often related to the substitution or dilution of alcoholic beverages by adding methanol to them to make them go further,” he said.

“And obviously methanol is a cheaper alcohol. It is an effective industrial detergent and therefore easy to obtain and easy to add to beverages.”

The two Melbourne teenagers were staying at the Nana Backpackers Hostel in Vang Vieng, Laos, about a 90-minute drive from the capital Vientiane, when they fell ill.

They are understood to have been drinking free spirits at the hostel bar the night before they fell ill.

However, the hostel management denied serving contaminated drinks, insisting that guests at several hostels in the area had been affected.

When the Herald Sun visited the venue, bartender Toan Van Vanng set out to prove the drinks the girls consumed at the hostel were not tainted by pouring the same vodka and Coke the girls consumed before drinking them themselves.

Ten people are reported to have been affected by the mass methanol poisoning incident, with two Swedish nationals already dying as a result of the incident.

The families of the Melbourne girls have spoken of their shock at what happened and the anxious wait they are now living through.