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146
Australian who drank tainted alcohol in Laos has died, raising toll to 4, including an American (apnews.com)
submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/world
21 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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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[–] [email protected] 39 points 5 days ago (5 children)

The article keeps mentioning that the drinks could have been spiked, but that seems very unlikely and a weird way to poison someone, especially since there doesn't seem to be a motive or relationship between the victims.

what's much more likely, given it's Laos, is that the whiskey was poorly homemade and the bar sourced their whiskey from that. unskillful distiller, laotian whiskey is a cultural tradition and whiskey is pretty easy to make. all you need is a still, but if you keep all of the distillation, the beginning of the liquid coming out is methanol, which is very poisonous. after the methanol is gone then it's all ethanol, which is the alcohol you're used to drinking and is less poisonous.

it sounds like this was in a bar, so the supplier of the bar probably got lazy or didn't want to waste any of the distillate they were making and kept the methanol in through negligence or greed.

[–] lobo 5 points 3 days ago

Methanol poisoning happened where I live too some time back. That turned out to be that someone was intentionaly mixing methanol with the alcohol to increase yield. And then someone else mixed more methanol withot knowing there was already some. Increasing methanol to ethanol ratio to poisonous levels.

Ethanol act as inhibitor to methanol poisoning...

[–] BassTurd 19 points 5 days ago

I've watched a good chunk of videos on moonshine at home, and for anyone interested in this further, most of them are pretty clear and you can see the difference between the methanol and ethanol when collecting.

The methanol is cloudy, so the first jar+ is collected and separated. After that the remaining is collected for drinking. I believe that some people will then dump the methanol in their next mash to distill it again and get some of the ethanol that was also collected with the methanol. It's a pretty neat, and simple process with huge implications.

[–] Sludgehammer 11 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days 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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days 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.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 4 days ago (2 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 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Still what he said doesnt make sense as the compound is added specificqlly to make the ethanol undrinkable and therefore not eligble for alcohol taxes like you said.

[–] feedum_sneedson 0 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Not disputing that, they have clearly muddled a few things up. Perhaps they mean methylated spirit - that has methanol and denatonium benzoate added to it, but I haven't seen it for sale in many years as it kept killing homeless alcoholics.

[–] Sludgehammer 1 points 3 days ago

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

By industrial alcohol, I meant ethanol intended for industrial purposes. And while it's just as safe as alcohol intended for human consumption it's usually much cheaper.

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

I looked in your profile and noticed some comments in German, so I guess this is how I find out "denatured alcohol" is a US centric term. In the United States denatured alcohol is a term for a high concentration ethanol mixed with enough methanol to make it poisonous (and maybe a few other things to make it even more unpalatable). It's usually used for fuel or a solvent. Just throw "denatured alcohol" into the search engine of your choice and it should spit out a few examples.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Yeah home brew whiskey is a tradition there apparently according to a Bourdain vlog I saw some years ago. People have to be careful with that stuff.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago

I tasted it and immediately I had red flags go up in my mind, the bottles I tried(had to make sure) definitely tasted homemade and not completely divorced from methanol

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Is there even a speck of evidence for this? Or is this pure speculation? Are you from Laos and know the area well?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

a speck of evidence for homemade laotian whiskey being popular?

there are hundreds of homemade bottles at every market.

each market seller or restaurant that has whiskey offers their own homemade laotian whiskey as well.

I'm not from Laos, but I lived there for a while.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

A speck of evidence for your hypothesis, since it’s pretty specific. But given you’ve lived there for a while, I’d say you know what you’re talking about.

Was just curious, as some people here just like to make up shit.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I've been to Laos several times. Most of the foreigners living there know not to drink the cocktails. In a country where people earn a couple of dollars per day there's just too much incentive to swap out the expensive imported spirits for the local version and pocket the difference.

Also, Beer Lao is really good.

[–] ms_lane 6 points 4 days ago

Englishwoman died a few hours ago, the other Australian girl and an NZ victim on life support too.

Rest in peace Bianca Jones, Simone White and the American and Danish Victims.

Rest in pieces Laotian tourism industry.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Looks like the headline was updated to 5 deaths now. What a tragic end to what should have been a fun and memorable night out.