How can moonshine cause blindness?
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Moonshine is made in backyard stills by people that don’t have a great deal of chemistry knowledge. Just a lot of home grown, how-to.
Methanol is the bad alcohol that can cause you to go blind. It boils off when the mixture reaches 148.5’F.
Ethanol is the good alcohol that gets you drunk. It starts boiling off when the mixture reaches 173.1’F.
You need to release the vapors until the mixture is at 173.1, or past, if the vapors are being fed to the condenser since you don’t want the condensed fluid getting mixed with the moonshine and killing you.
“As little as 10 mL of pure methanol when drunk is metabolized into formic acid, which can cause permanent blindness by destruction of the optic nerve. 15 mL is potentially fatal, although the median lethal dose is typically 100 mL (3.4 fl oz) (i.e. 1–2 mL/kg body weight of pure methanol).” — Wikipedia
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