South African couple die after drinking one bottle of home brewed beer each

[MickDundee]

Natural selection at its finest...

Likely to make the Darwin Awards shortlist

 

[Sadfield]

Another couple dead

Seems like they added something nasty to a simple ginger beer.

It appears that couples that dress the same are a high risk group.

 

[Richie_asg1]

Report says that in both incidents pure ethanol was added. Shame they didn't have that in the title "Couple die after consuming pure alcohol" would be a more detailed description.

Almost pales into insignificance against the 700 people dead in Iran who died as a result of drinking Methanol as a rumoured cure for Corona. I wonder if they drank it neat or added it to Coke. Then the paper should read "700 dead after drinking drinking CokeCola"

 

[obscure]

Report says that in both incidents pure ethanol was added. Shame they didn't have that in the title "Couple die after consuming pure alcohol" would be a more detailed description.

Almost pales into insignificance against the 700 people dead in Iran who died as a result of drinking Methanol as a rumoured cure for Corona. I wonder if they drank it neat or added it to Coke. Then the paper should read "700 dead after drinking drinking CokeCola"

Extremely misleading headline, that said if it was genuinely pure ethanol I doubt it would have being an issue in small amounts, but if I remember correctly a lot of lab grade ethanol has trace amounts of Benzine, that and other impurities, especially in something like rubbing alcohol. Although of course drinking pure alcohol in any great quantity would probably kill you as well.

 

[darkbright]

300-400ml of "pure" ethanol would kill most people.

 

[obscure]

300-400ml of "pure" ethanol would kill most people.

I was going to say that didn’t seem like much before realising that 400ml of ethanol is roughly the equivalent of a litre of Vodka, and a lethal dose is supposedly around about 5-8g per kilo, so yes this would be a lethal dose for most of us. I suspect the other issue is I would find it difficult to physically drink a litre of Vodka, 400ml of ethanol mixed with a litre of ginger beer, the sugar would likely take the edge off enough to down it. Should say given the afore mentioned high risk of mortality I have no desire to try this.

Still I suspect for most of us it would be the methanol or similar that would be the part ending up killing you rather than the ethanol, which according to a quick google search a lethal dose is about 1g per kilo, and you need even less to do serious harm to yourself. Basically the toxic label on my bottle of rubbing alcohol isn’t just for show.