Tag: Wood alcohol

Ingesting as little as 10ml of pure methanol can cause permanent blindness, and 30ml or more can be fatal. This stark reality is the primary reason why methanol is not used for drinking purposes, highlighting its extreme danger compared to the ethanol found in alcoholic beverages.

Statistics from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) report thousands of methanol poisoning cases each year, with fatality rates as high as 40% in untreated cases. This highlights the extreme danger of confusing this industrial chemical with drinkable ethanol and provides a clear answer to the question: is methyl alcohol edible? {Link: BBC https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn42rnp4n9jo}

Methanol and spirit are not the same thing, and confusing them can be fatal. While methylated spirit is a mixture consisting mainly of ethanol with added denaturants, methanol is a distinct, highly toxic chemical compound known as wood alcohol.