keith_w wrote:
Don called me a twit, so I'm forced to admit I may have misunderstood
his triggering statements. It seems he was alluding to the ingestion
of methanol, not ethanol.
Sorry if I offended by my misunderstanding...
keith whaley
We call each other twits in this house regularly, almost as a term of
endearment, so don't worry about it.
But -- there was another remark that needs clarifying. Someone said
methanol was otherwise known as Moonshine. This is not true. Moonshine
was/is 'whiskey' (ethyl alcohol) distilled in the forests of the Midwest
(Kentucky*
being notorious for this at one time). It was usually done at night - I
don't
know exactly why, but perhaps because Law Enforcement needs to sleep
sometimes? Unfortunately the brews used also yield quite an appreciable
amount
of methanol and so the first distillate to come over in the process --
almost
all methanol -- is discarded. The tailings (last stuff) are also full of
undesirable
fractions. These mountain men didn't use thermometers and is was only
experience that told them what to collect and what to dump. I don't know
how much methanol was consumed in the US during prohibition but it must
have been a lot. Blind drunk is exactly what it means. The trouble is
that the
poisoning process, once started, is very difficult to stop. Dialysis and
ethanol
are used amongst other treatments, but after 12 hours most of the damage
will
be permanent. Victims would end up with shaking limbs (like Parkinson's
disease) bent over like old folk, shuffling and unable to walk straight and
usually blind or almost so. This is one reason why most counties no
longer use Methanol to denature alcohol to prevent its use as a beverage.
Why? Because they'd be deprived of the excise and tax. In SA ethanol used
as fuel for stoves and other things was methylated and dyed blue. It
still is
blue, but I don't think (hope not) methanol is added nowadays. In Finland
lightly denatured alcohol is used in many laboratories and is controlled as
well as the pure stuff because despite the nasty stuff (aldehyde, ketones or
both) added to make it taste foul, it is non-poisonous.
* And in Finland to this day -- here it's called pontikka.
--
Dr E D F Williams
www.kolumbus.fi/mimosa/
personal.inet.fi/cool/don.williams/
41660 TOIVAKKA – Finland - +358400706616
