Alcohol intake is responsible for around three million deaths every year worldwide accounting for 5.3 percent of all deaths requiring measures to curb drinking habits. Liquor claims 2.6 lakh lives in India and is the causal factor linked to more than 200 diseases.
According to WHO death of 7.7 per cent of men and 2.6 percent of women worldwide has been linked to alcohol while 13.5 percent of the total deaths involving people in the age group of 20 to 39 are attributable to liquor.
DEATH ON THE RISE
The number of hooch-related deaths has been on a rise in the country. The state of Bihar continues to see liquor sales on the black market. People are dying due to the consumption of locally made spurious liquor.
The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data shows 6,172 people died between 2016 and 2020 due to illicit hooch. This means that 3 people on average die every single day due to spurious liquor poisoning in the country.
METHANOL, THE VILLAIN
In the prohibition – bound Bihar, the main culprit in poisoning from hooch is methanol. Traces of methanol are found in legally made and licensed alcoholic drinks like beer. Yet, country made liquor can contain large quantities of methanol when it is not brewed with care. Methanol is essentially a toxic industrial- standard alcohol, which is added to increase the potency of liquor.
Methanol is now easily available in the market. It has many industrial applications. These include the manufacture of varnishes among other products.
World Health Organization recent report on methanol poisoning says that “problems arise when higher concentrations are formed during incorrectly managed distillation processes, but more particularly when methanol is deliberately added to fortify informally- produced spirits and illicit alcoholic drinks”
Methanol gets absorbed in the gastrointestinal track of the person drinking it. It can also enter the body through the skin and by inhalation. Toxic effects arise from methanol metabolizing in the body to first form formaldehyde.
Formaldehyde, which is thought to be a cancer causing agent, is quickly converted in to formic acid.
When large amounts of methanol enter the body with copious amounts of spurious liquor, formic acid accumulates in body tissues. This accumulation leads to acidosis.
Depending on the amount of alcohol consumed, the effects kick in. Often, the victims of methanol. poisoning need intensive medical care.
The poisoning affects all the organs of the body including the eyes, kidneys and liver.
Often a patient’s vision is affected, and cases of severe poisoning result in blindness. Coma, convulsions, and death from respiratory arrest may ensue.
It is urgent that doctors and nurses are informed. The problem is always methanol. The antidote to methanol is ethanol. This may sound strange. When a person has consumed deadly methanol, they must consume large amounts of safe alcohol. Only ethanol is effective in treating methanol poisoning. This is because ethanol competes successfully with methanol for an enzyme in the body. This enzyme breaks methanol down into various components. One of these components is formaldehyde, which kills, blinds, and cripples people. If ethanol is consumed, the methanol will not break down and will pass harmlessly from the body.
The victims of methanol poisoning from hooch in India are generally from economically and socially backward communities. They are less equipped to seek specialized care.
(Dr Naresh Purohit is an Epidemiologist And Principal Investigator for Indian Medical Academy for Preventive Health. The views and opinion expressed in this article are those of the author)
