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I think you meant "ethanol", methanol is fatal to drink even in small doses.
by nuxi 3y ago
I think you meant "ethanol", methanol is fatal to drink even in small doses.
- bittercynic 3y agoI think GP was referring to the increase in methanol poisoning during prohibition.
- steppi 3y agoNot that ethanol isn't also neurotoxic (to a much lesser degree), but bootleg moonshines common during prohibition often contained trace amounts of methanol, the number of people irreversibly injured by methanol poisoning greatly exceeded the number who died. By 1926, according to Prohibition, by Edward Behr, 750 New Yorkers perished from such poisoning and hundreds of thousands more suffered irreversible injuries including blindness and paralysis. [0] [0] https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1864521_1864524_1864626,00.html https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28...
- mrguyorama 3y agoDidn't the government also add methanol to non-consumption alcohol products as well, contributing to those poisoning numbers?
- steppi 3y agoYeah, industrial alcohols were (and still are) "denatured" with additives to make them toxic or unpalatable and industrial alcohol was often used as a precursor for bootleg spirits during prohibition. I think modern denaturants lean more towards unpalatable than toxic.
- OkayPhysicist 3y agoThis was likely the cause of the vast majority of methanol poisonings during the prohibition. You have to use exotic, hard to break down carbohydrates in your beer, wine, or mash (the pre-distillation fermented product), like tree bark, to end up with significant quantities of methanol. Most of the methanol poisonings were from poorly "re"natured fuel alcohol.
- throwanem 3y agoNo, I meant methanol. It's an easy contaminant to produce through improper distillation practice, and the most common of several contaminants which produced unfortunate outcomes among drinkers of illegal liquor during prohibition.
- nuxi 3y agoRight, thanks, I missed your point.
- htag 3y agoMethanol specifically is produced during the distillation process. The methanol vapors and ethanol vapors reside next to each other in the distillation column, making it a common impurity that is brought over in the distillation process. Great care needs to be taken to avoid collecting the methanol. This simple fact is the greatest argument for distillation having much higher legal barriers than the simple brewing involved in beer/wine/mead.
- dweymouth 3y agoSpeaking technically, methanol isn't produced during distillation, it's concentrated. Since it boils at a lower point than ethanol, it disproportionately comes out in the "heads" of a distillation run. The source wine/beer/mash already has all the methanol in it, it's just it's not a problem when present in the small quantities in a non-distilled drink, alongside with a much greater amount of ethanol. (Ethanol can actually act as an antidote to methanol since your body processes it first and can then excrete much of the methanol unmetabolized)
- OkayPhysicist 3y agoDistilling doesn't produce jack-diddly-squat. It just concentrates. Methanol is a side effect of the fermentation process, and only common with exotic carbohydrates. In a normal beer, wine, or wash, you'll find less methanol than in your morning glass of orange juice.
- throwanem 3y ago