A 39-year-old woman was taken to hospital after she drunk cleaning agent while lunching at a restaurant near to the Luxemburgplein in Brussels. The Francophone daily ‘La Capitale’ reports that the woman had taken the cleaning agent from a self-service fridge where it had been left among bottles of mineral water.
Last Monday the woman went for lunch with a colleague to a restaurant on the Luxemburgplein, not far from the European Parliament. She bought what she believed was a bottle of Bru mineral water from the restaurant’s self-service drinks fridge. However, she soon realised that what she taken from the frige was not mineral water. When she started to drink it she immediately had a burning sensation in her throat.
Afterwards it became clear that what she had drunk was not water, but a chemical cleaning agent. The woman told ‘La Capitale’ that the manager of the restaurant said that the cleaning fluid had probably been put into the fridge by mistake by a member of the cleaning staff.
Evidence
When she arrived at hospital, the woman had to undergo an endoscopy and gastric lavage. She was left with a burned oesophagus. She says that she could have died if she had drunk more of the cleaning agent.
The incident has been reported to the police and the bottle of what turned out to be a cleaning agent has been confiscated as evidence.
The restaurant stresses that what happened was a quite exceptional accident and that it is “deeply sorry and shocked" by what has happened. The restaurant will cover the woman’s medical costs.