Lethal brew india

[Irish]

tainted liquor in India
Sunday, July 17, 2016 - 10:28 am

At least 19 people have died and another six have been blinded after drinking tainted liquor in northern India over the weekend, police said.

Another 50 people fell ill after consuming the home-brewed liquor on Friday and were being treated in hospitals in Etah district in Uttar Pradesh state, senior police officer Ajay Shankar Rai said.

The Press Trust of India news agency put the death toll at 21.

Mr Rai said the victims bought the liquor from a village shop on Friday evening and started falling ill and dying.
The shop owner, who has been arrested, was selling a pouch of tainted liquor for a mere 15 rupees (20p), six times cheaper than the legal drink, he said.

Most of the victims were poor farmers and labourers, looking for a cheap means of intoxication.

India's poor often buy cheap home-brewed liquor made of syrups and medicines that are spiked with methyl alcohol and other industrial spirits to give it a kick.

District Magistrate Ajay Yadav ordered an investigation, but an excessive use of methyl alcohol in the liquor appears to have caused the deaths.

State authorities have suspended six officials, including four policemen, for allowing the sale of illicit liquor in Etah district, nearly 240 kilometres (150 miles) south-west of Lucknow, the Uttar Pradesh state capital.

Illicit liquor is a hugely profitable industry across India, with manufacturers operating from homes, hidden warehouses and even forests.

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[Chippy_Tea]

Methyl Alcohol

A colorless, volatile, water-soluble, poisonous liquid, CH 4 O, obtained by the destructive distillation of wood or the incomplete oxidation of natural gas, or produced synthetically from carbon monoxide and hydrogen, used chiefly as a solvent, a fuel, and an automobile antifreeze and in the synthesis of formaldehyde.

 

[Irish]

Sounds painful, luckily I can't begin to imagine what it would be like to consume it.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Probably awful, i wonder what they mean by "pouch" would that be like an unfrozen ice-pop.

 

[Irish]

I had a little bag in my head when reading it, 20p worth so perhaps.

It's sad when people with near no money have to resort to risking their lives for a bit of hooch! And you got the ones producing these "drinks" most likely knowing they are putting lives in danger and the can't have sold it for very much more to this shop

 

[ElChemist]

Nasty stuff Methanol...

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[brumbrew]

I recall watching a documentary about something similar in Russia. Cleaners were selling industrial spirit out the back door of a hospital!

This one is UK http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-15888342

 

[Dutto]

India isn't the safest of places to eat or drink.

When I was out there the farmers were discovered to be injecting sugar-water into melons to make them sweeter; and the origins of both the water and the sugar were unknown!

If you ever visit India my advice is to only drink boiled water or beer (and then only from brown or green bottles), eat what the locals eat and never eat uncooked fruit or veg!

On the Plus Side, if you get the chance "GO" to India because it is a fascinating country populated by great people and sits firmly in my "Top Five" of all the countries that I have visited. :thumb: :thumb: :thumb:

 

[simon12]

You get alot of this dodgy booze in Kenya in illegal drinking establishments in the slums and every now and then a load or people end up in hospital or dead, they actually subsidise lager there to try and stop it but at a few pence per glass that like half a bottle of vodka beer just can't compete. Its called Changaa there you can tell if theres a high methanol content as it makes it feel like its cold like its been in the fridge when it hasn't.

 

[Cwrw666]

And this is why we have such stringent food regs in the UK. And still the blighters flog us horse meat instead of beef, though of course no-one ever died from eating horse meat (unless it was humanely killed by the vet first!)
On the other side of the coin, I was in Rumania in the early nineties and we were drinking extremely large quantities of 60% ABV plum brandy from the village still, distributed in used plastic coke bottles. Never had a hangover. We were warned, however, not to touch a drop from the government liquor shops...

 

[geetee]

Many years I was at school with a guy who then worked in a lab and obtained a bottle of 96% ethanol. He used it to spike his drinks at a party and unfortunately they found him dead on the stairs at 19 years old !
Deadly stuff both methanol and ethanol and warrants the controls put on it's use and availability in its purest form.

 

[MarkMayf]

Methanol is added to ethanol with the sole purpose of rendering it unfit for consumption, ie methylated spirits.

 

[Covrich]

Many years I was at school with a guy who then worked in a lab and obtained a bottle of 96% ethanol. He used it to spike his drinks at a party and unfortunately they found him dead on the stairs at 19 years old !
Deadly stuff both methanol and ethanol and warrants the controls put on it's use and availability in its purest form.

Sounds rough

I remember using ethanol in chemistry at school and a kid trying to nick it..

 

[brumbrew]

And this is why we have such stringent food regs in the UK. And still the blighters flog us horse meat instead of beef, though of course no-one ever died from eating horse meat (unless it was humanely killed by the vet first!)
On the other side of the coin, I was in Rumania in the early nineties and we were drinking extremely large quantities of 60% ABV plum brandy from the village still, distributed in used plastic coke bottles. Never had a hangover. We were warned, however, not to touch a drop from the government liquor shops...

I've sampled some of this here in the UK. Granted my mate at work bought it back from his villiage.

Also know polish guys at work who drink similar stuff. They all only drink UK stuff or stuff they've got themselves ;-)

 

[Dutto]

........And still the blighters flog us horse meat ...........

Personally, as an omnivore, I love horse-meat. :thumb:

As the butchers charge premium prices for horse-meat in France I have often wondered what rubbish they were selling as beef in the UK.

 

[Bianca]

Drinking alcohol is no good but is nice occasionally. http://bigessaywriter.com/blog/is-it-worth-to-start-drinking-alcohol What do you think?

 

[ElChemist]

What do I think. I think your bot came to the wrong forum sweetie. Look at the name... now go away...

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[Richie_asg1]

Did anyone miss the "State authorities have suspended six officials, including four policemen, for allowing the sale of illicit liquor in Etah district" part - which shows the authorities were bent and allowed it to happen - before people started dying? If they knew it was likely to cause death and allowed the crime to happen - that makes them guilty of being an accessory before the fact.

I thought they added Pyridine to make methalated spirit, and oil of wintergreen to ethanol to make surgical spirit. Neither of which you would want to drink without poisoning yourself.

Oil of wintergreen smells lovely though. As an ex-nurse my partner is addicted to it.:) - The smell not the spirit :lol:

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Drinking alcohol is no good but is nice occasionally. http://bigessaywriter.com/blog/is-it-worth-to-start-drinking-alcohol What do you think?

I stopped reading here (the title) - IS IT WORTH TO START DRINKING ALCOHOL?

 

[Dutto]

Way back in 1976, my brother complained that he had tried everything to clear some orange wine and after a year of repeated attempts it steadfastly remained cloudy. "Any ideas?" he said.

At work, I had access to a fully stocked lab over the weekends and a bit of spare time so I took his two DJ's of cloudy orange wine and returned to him a quarter DJ of crystal clear product with the strict instructions that it could only be used to fortify the orange wines that had already cleared.

However, instead of the recommended 1:5 ratio (which would have fortified an ABV 12% wine to ABV +/-23%) he mixed it 50/50 (ABV +/- 46%) and offered a small glass of his Orange Wine to Bessie who was one of our Mum's friends.

Bessie accepted with alacrity and at the first sip declared that it tasted superb. An hour later Joe asked Bessie if she would like another glass of Orange Wine to which she replied. "Yes please." and handed him her glass with the question "How strong is it?"

Joe suddenly remembered the 1:5 ratio and asked "Why?" to which Bessie replied "It seems to have dissolved the Fixodent that was holding my teeth in place." so Joe went out to his shed and readjusted the mix while Bessie retired to the bathroom to fix her teeth.

Move on thirty odd years and in 2007 our Mum went into a Care Home, my brother went into sheltered housing and I won the job of tidying up Mum's house, garage and sheds. Lo and behold! Tucked away in one of the sheds was half a bottle of the stuff I had given Joe back in 1976; and mixed 10:1 with a glass of orange squash it still made a lovely long drink on a summer's afternoon! :whistle: :whistle:

Happy Days! :thumb: :thumb:

PS

I did know what I was doing and even ran a composite sample through a Gas Chromatograph to check that it contained nothing unexpected.