Mr RB
Well-Known Member
Jpanhalt, Australia switched its methylated spirits denaturing chemicals some years back if I remember right, to make them less toxic and more effective to stop drinkers. I expect it's the pyridine which would have been swapped.
From what I know about methanol it's not that toxic when combined wiht a large enough quantity of ethanol. Many red wines contain over 1% methanol and people actually DRINK that stuff (and wonder why red wine gives a nasty headache).
RCinFla, thanks for the info, I use the metho for numerous cleaning tasks including painted and plastic surfaces and have not seen any signs of it attacking surfaces or finished except where they are alcohol soluble.
(edit) I just looked and found a PDF on Australian metho here;
https://www.electro-tech-online.com/custompdfs/2012/03/methylated.pdf
it has 96-99.8% ethanol, 2-4% water and not more than 1% denaturing compounds which officially "will not alter the safety of the product". It also says officially the metho is "a low hazard by skin contact".
I think this may have been after they made the metho safer, ie it shouldn't cause the blindness and brain damage of methanol if swallowed but the denaturing is still enough to make it extremely nauseating and unpleasant to try to drink.
From what I know about methanol it's not that toxic when combined wiht a large enough quantity of ethanol. Many red wines contain over 1% methanol and people actually DRINK that stuff (and wonder why red wine gives a nasty headache).
RCinFla, thanks for the info, I use the metho for numerous cleaning tasks including painted and plastic surfaces and have not seen any signs of it attacking surfaces or finished except where they are alcohol soluble.
(edit) I just looked and found a PDF on Australian metho here;
https://www.electro-tech-online.com/custompdfs/2012/03/methylated.pdf
it has 96-99.8% ethanol, 2-4% water and not more than 1% denaturing compounds which officially "will not alter the safety of the product". It also says officially the metho is "a low hazard by skin contact".
I think this may have been after they made the metho safer, ie it shouldn't cause the blindness and brain damage of methanol if swallowed but the denaturing is still enough to make it extremely nauseating and unpleasant to try to drink.
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