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Don't even think about it. It's possible that some solutions/mixtures might use methanol instead of the more usual ethanol. Consumption of as little as 30/40ml

Don't even think about it. It's possible that some solutions/mixtures might use methanol instead of the more usual ethanol. Consumption of as little as 30/40ml will blind you and if you double that then it's curtains. Methanol can cause cumulative damage and unlike ethanol it absorbes easily though the skin. The reason I mention methanol is that in the past when rules were more lax I've used an ethanol/methanol mixture for shellac and some jurisdictions may still allow its use. As with ethanol, methanol works perfectly as a shellac solvent, also it's often very difficult to distinguish between these solvents without a proper chemical test.

kragen 5y ago
I was talking about ethanol, not methanol; it's easy to distinguish ethanol if you distilled it from rotten fruit. Consumption of 30 or 40 ml of ethanol won't blind you; the humans commonly take toxic doses of ethanol intentionally and even habitually. It's stupid and dangerous, but it's not even in the same ballpark of risk as drinking methanol, benzene, styrene, or even acetonitrile.
- hilbert42 5y ago
  You missed the point, methanol/ethanol and sometimes pyridine mixtures are commonplace although less so in many jurisdictions nowadays. Not only are people tempted to drink these mixtures they in fact deliberately do for their intoxicating effects - even though they know the stuff is poisonous (even conspicuous warning labels on the bottles marked 'POISON' don't stop them). In one very hot town I know the local store kept bottles of the stuff in the refrigerator for the local 'metho' drinkers - no, this isn't an exaggeration! Whilst many of these formulations were deliberately introduced to denature ethanol so that it could be sold without having duty added, overall they've had a serious delitarious effect in that the negative outcomes from a public health perspective were much, much worse than various governments losing a few dollars in excise duty. After about a century or more, more enlightened regimes have come to the conclusion that if nothing else it's cheaper not to poison citizens who insist in imbibing the poison and they've now swapped out the methanol, etc. for Bitrex/denatonium as a non-toxic denaturant alternative. I don't know where you live but where I do the methanaion of ethanol was commonplace until recent years. Moreover, toxic pyridine was added to make the mixture stink and yet people still drank it. Although never having been tempted myself, even I'm happy the methanol has gone as I regularly use many litres of ethanol as a cleaning agent. Before the methanol was removed I had to use the less dangerous isopropyl alcohol (propan-2-ol) for safety which was much more expensive. The fact that methanol/ethanol mixtures were (and are) so commonplace and the fact that they've been around for so long - and that trade between jurisdictions with different poison standards is common - we cannot assume any nonfood ethanol (or ethanol as solvent, i.e.: in shellac) is pure or that the only 'additive' is water unless marked BP/pharmaceutical/lab grade, etc. Essentially, the longstanding practice of mixing these two alcohols for industrial use hasn't entirely been forgotten and that habit/old practice lingers. We've seen evidence of this recently when temporary ethanol shortages led to unscrupulous suppliers substituting methanol in hand sanitizers and the CDC having to take action.

kragen 5y ago

I was talking about ethanol, not methanol; it's easy to distinguish ethanol if you distilled it from rotten fruit. Consumption of 30 or 40 ml of ethanol won't blind you; the humans commonly take toxic doses of ethanol intentionally and even habitually. It's stupid and dangerous, but it's not even in the same ballpark of risk as drinking methanol, benzene, styrene, or even acetonitrile.

hilbert42 5y ago
You missed the point, methanol/ethanol and sometimes pyridine mixtures are commonplace although less so in many jurisdictions nowadays. Not only are people tempted to drink these mixtures they in fact deliberately do for their intoxicating effects - even though they know the stuff is poisonous (even conspicuous warning labels on the bottles marked 'POISON' don't stop them). In one very hot town I know the local store kept bottles of the stuff in the refrigerator for the local 'metho' drinkers - no, this isn't an exaggeration! Whilst many of these formulations were deliberately introduced to denature ethanol so that it could be sold without having duty added, overall they've had a serious delitarious effect in that the negative outcomes from a public health perspective were much, much worse than various governments losing a few dollars in excise duty. After about a century or more, more enlightened regimes have come to the conclusion that if nothing else it's cheaper not to poison citizens who insist in imbibing the poison and they've now swapped out the methanol, etc. for Bitrex/denatonium as a non-toxic denaturant alternative. I don't know where you live but where I do the methanaion of ethanol was commonplace until recent years. Moreover, toxic pyridine was added to make the mixture stink and yet people still drank it. Although never having been tempted myself, even I'm happy the methanol has gone as I regularly use many litres of ethanol as a cleaning agent. Before the methanol was removed I had to use the less dangerous isopropyl alcohol (propan-2-ol) for safety which was much more expensive. The fact that methanol/ethanol mixtures were (and are) so commonplace and the fact that they've been around for so long - and that trade between jurisdictions with different poison standards is common - we cannot assume any nonfood ethanol (or ethanol as solvent, i.e.: in shellac) is pure or that the only 'additive' is water unless marked BP/pharmaceutical/lab grade, etc. Essentially, the longstanding practice of mixing these two alcohols for industrial use hasn't entirely been forgotten and that habit/old practice lingers. We've seen evidence of this recently when temporary ethanol shortages led to unscrupulous suppliers substituting methanol in hand sanitizers and the CDC having to take action.