this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2024
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An Australian teenager has died after drinking tainted alcohol in Laos in what Australia’s prime minister on Thursday called every parent’s nightmare. An American and two Danish tourists also died, officials said, following reports that several people had been sickened in a Laotian town popular with backpackers.

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[–] Sludgehammer@lemmy.world 4 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (2 children)

I dunno, as I understand it getting enough methanol to kill from bad distilling is possible, but really easy to avoid. Even the most amateur distiller could avoid it... and they would probably avoid it since corpses are lousy repeat customers.

No, my guess would be is that someone in the supply chain was doing some minor fraud by adding some industrial ethanol and water to the the whisky. Add a bucks worth of industrial ethanol to a gallon of whiskey and boom, now you have two gallons of whiskey. It's gonna be mixed into drinks and sold to drunk tourists, and it probably tasted like crap to begin with, so who's gonna notice a slightly shittier flavor? Except this time somebody screwed up and got some de-natured alcohol rather then pure ethanol.

[–] Saleh@feddit.org 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Industrial ethanol? It is still just ethanol. It is not more poisonous because it is "industrial".

When referring to "industrial alcohol" it always means methanol in that context.

And for industrial purposes fermentation is still the way to make ethanol, rather than chemical synthesis.

Finally, what is denatured alcohol even supposed to mean? Proteins can denature, but they are complex molecules. Alcohol cannot denature.

I am sorry, but what you write does not make any sense.

[–] feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world 2 points 43 minutes ago

Denatured ethanol has denatonium benzoate in it, yes it's a strange word which I suspect primarily serves a legislative purpose. If it had been denatured alcohol, nobody would have died, it would have just tasted bitter.

[–] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 4 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

easy to avoid if you want to avoid it.

I think you have a higher regard for the stringent ethics of poverty-stricken moonshiners than I do.

but what you're saying certainly could have happened also.