Consumption and Toxicity
See also: Harm reductionDespite its poisonous nature, denatured alcohol is sometimes consumed as a surrogate alcohol, which can result in blindness or death if the denatured alcohol contains methanol. This happened during Prohibition, when the U.S. government used methanol in industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States. To help prevent this, denatonium is often added to give the substance an extremely bitter flavor. Substances such as pyridine help to give the mixture an unpleasant odor, and emetic (vomiting) agents such as syrup of ipecac may also be included.
Read more about this topic: Methylated Spirit
Famous quotes containing the words consumption and and/or consumption:
“The Cairo conference ... is about a complicated web of education and employment, consumption and poverty, development and health care. It is also about whether governments will follow where women have so clearly led them, toward safe, simple and reliable choices in family planning. While Cairo crackles with conflict, in the homes of the world the orthodoxies have been duly heard, and roundly ignored.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)