Laos Methanol Poisining

I'm bumping this up to encourage more people to sign the petition.
The governments in Indonesia, Laos and other countries are reluctant to take effective action in case it affects the tourist trade. So the best approach is to reach out directly to young people in the upper years of secondary school when they may be planning a gap year or foreign travel.
It's taken more seriously by the Australian authorities and we need our UK government to addrss this issue too before more young people lose their lives.

please sign the petition for education in schools
petition.parliament.uk/petitions/716935

I'm OK hols right now and someone just walked down the beach selling mojitos.

This story definitely made me stop and think.

I hadnt even thought of that

I travelled to SEAsia (and Vang Vieng) twenty years ago, we were warned of bootleg alcohol in the whole region. Only ever drank bottled beer and warned to avoid spirits. Very sad that this is still an issue and those young lives have been lost.

Similar has happened in other places. There were no spirits sold in Czech when we were there like 10 years ago. Fakes made their way into real supply and it was mayhem with some deaths so they had temporary prohibition until fakes were located. From what I remember it was mainly alcohol dated past x date.
Iirc Poland had bout of it too but can't remember if they had to resolve to full prohibition.

It happens. I don't think this was intentional poisoning of the particular people.

The risks of these home brewed type spirits were around when I was travelling Thailand, Bali etc over 15 years ago. I stuck purely to bottled beers

it’s absolutely tragic and heartbreaking that what should be an exciting trip has ended this way for so many.

It's really important to make your adult children aware of this danger before they go travelling, especially in a backpacking/youth hostelling type situation.

One of the women who died was a newly qualified solicitor, so probably not an irresponsible idiot. It really is something that could happen to anyone in that sort of environment. I went to the full moon party in Thailand and the thing then was drinking disgusting "long island iced tea" out of buckets with straws. God only knows what was in it. I think I mostly stuck to beer, but not because I was aware of the risk of methanol poisoning.

I live in Thailand but have spent a lot of time in bordering countries. Home brewed spirits are everywhere and it is common knowledge to never, ever take a free drink. That is how the women get roofied and raped at the full moon parties.

Local (branded) spirits are literally like £5 a bottle if you are on a budget. It is insanity to drink unknown substances.

It is absolutely tragic what has happened but I am gobsmacked these people hadn't heard of this happening before or weren't worried about accepting opened drinks/spirits. It's like accepting pills from complete strangers.

I would have thought this was common knowledge but since it clearly isn't, I think our governments possibly need to run a few campaigns on social media warning people.

Explanation of what methanol does to the body near the end of this article about the poisonings and deaths.

Troubling claims about seedy Laos bar | news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site

Yes they, from what I understand, hadn't poured the top of the bottle off. I hope they and the people that made it go to gaol for life. 2 young girls dead, plus a young UK lawyer , a US guy they havent released the details of and two Danish people. It's mass murder, simple as that.
#Boycott Laos

I remember a BBC documentary series a few years ago about Environmental Health Officers going about their business (anyone recall Mr Trebus??)

A Life of Grime.

Mr Trebus was legendary.

Maybe they didn’t distil. They could have separated the alcohol by freezing. In which case the methanol would not have boiled off before the ethanol.

Of course we don’t know either way if this specific case was caused by an intentional act or not until the investigation concludes.

I’m no expert on it but my online research into this tells me that (generally speaking) it does unfortunately happen intentionally quite frequently due to people wanting to increase profit margins.

It is lack of regulation in a developing country where people are very poorly paid and there is little incentive to follow rules. I don't think there was anything intentional.
2 of the young women were from Melbourne where I live and there is utter devastation in their community.

It absolutely can be and is often intentionally added to drinks as a cheap way to increase volume although yeah it can be accidental too as a result of negligence.

From a Sky news article:

In southeast Asia and other popular tourist destinations, methanol can be found in alcoholic drinks for two main reasons.
Firstly, it is cheaper than ethanol, so it is sometimes added instead to save costs, before the counterfeit alcohol is bottled and sold in shops and bars.
Alternatively, it can occur by accident when alcohol is homemade - something common across southeast Asia.
When alcohol is distilled and fermented without the appropriate monitoring, it can sometimes produce methanol in toxic quantities.
Because it is impossible to tell the difference between methanol and ethanol content without specialist equipment - homemade drinks are often offered to tourists without anyone knowing how dangerous they are.

Oh I wholeheartedly agree it is likely negligence. I just said can occur during fermentation because I wasn't aware that it always occurs. My point was that homebrew alcohol and methanol poisoning is quite common thing through out South East Asia.

My teens are getting to the age where drinking is likely and because we go to Bali somewhat regularly it is something I have discussed at length with them. It is scary because I knew the risks when I was young and still drank cocktails.

@Just2MoreSeasons This is actually happening - my favourite podcast ever. I listen to every evening; yet, didn't see this episode.

Will listen with interest. I didn't even realise this sort of thing could happen.

Fermentation naturally produces methanol along with the ethanol. Distillation is then used to separate the methanol from the ethanol. It isn't accidentally there. Either negligence or malice has taken place.

All the pictures of the victims that I've seen so far show blonde young women (I believe one man died too). I wondered if somebody had a dislike of blonde women and was deliberately targeting them with contaminated alcohol, but if @warofthetimemachines is correct, it may have affected more women simply because they're likely to drink less overall.

I was under the impression that during the fermenting process methanol can accidentally occur. I am Australian and this is a regular issue in Bali, our close neighbour. Lots of Balinese people regularly pour out the first drink or 2 from a bottle of spirits as they are aware of this.

You won't always know if it is home brew alcohol as bars will reuse regular vodka bottles. It is fairly well known here because of our frequent travels to Bali. That is why it is really encouraged to only drink beer or premixed drinks over there. So incredibly sad for the young people who lost their lives though.

I don't understand how this happens.

I know how to ferment sugars, grains, fruits etc and then distil to produce a spirit. (Vodka, Gin, Whisky etc)

You get impurities such as methanol, but they come off the distillation unit first (boiling point 64c), then comes the ethanol (boiling point 78c). Ethanol being the desired ingredient.

Are the producers of this "Hooch", so incompetent that they don't understand the basics of fermentation/distillation or is it more sinister?

@ladydiggins Mr Trebus is a British Hero!

It happens in the UK too, a few years ago the off licence in my street was raided over illegal bottles of fake vodka being sold

How does methanol do that much damage. Is it extremely poisonous.