How can moonshine cause blindness?
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When alcohol is created from various carbohydrates, it actually creates various alcohols. One is the one known for drinking: [ethanol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol). The rest is chemically poisonous to humans, such as [methanol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol) (aka wood alcohol or denatured alcohol), which can cause blindness as part of its poisoning.
In a proper set up, these different chemicals can be safely distilled and separated. They have different boiling points, so if the mixture is boiling at a certain temperature then it is safe to assume the distilled chemicals matches that boiling point. But in a moonshine set up, where there’s literally no government oversight enforcing safety inspections, they can be mixed together on accident. Further, if the brewers don’t care about their buyer’s health, they can even allow them to mix together due to greed; the extra volume the methanol would take up is an extra bottle or more of moonshine sold.
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