boozelicious poisoning

[piranha]

warning: high rant content.

i didn't have organic chemistry in highschool, and i've never been much interested in potable alcohol from the typical end user's point of view -- i don't like its effects when drunk, neither on myself nor on many other people -- so my recent investigations into perfumery have given me some surprises.

see, i've been trying to find a high-percentage, pure-as-possible (90-95%) ethyl alcohol, in order to experiment with making alcohol-based perfumes -- essential oils dissolve nicely in it, and it's a super preservative. it's what professional perfumers use. i just want a small bottle, like half a litre. do you think that's possible to buy anywhere in this town of 80,000 people? apparently not. drugstores feature isopropyl and rubbing alcohol, and they have a strong smell, totally unsuitable. hardware stores carry methanol and a variety of denatured ethanols, all of which are not stuff i want to have sit on my skin. liquor stores offer at best vodka, which is only 40%, and carries a hefty price tag. i could get it, though i haven't found a canadian online source yet, from a chemical supply house -- but i don't want to buy a 55 gallon drum, for heaven's sakes. getting it from the US is bound to cause all sorts of cross-border trouble, and it's not like the US is any more sensible about alcohol than canada. anything i can get locally is poisonous crap. WTF? we're not talking about weapons-grade plutonium here.

so i do a little more research. and if i understand this correctly, ethanol (ethyl alcohol, grain alcohol) is the "good" alcohol, the safest, least toxic of the lot, the stuff people drink, and what should be used in perfumes. methanol (methyl alcohol, methyl hydrate, wood alcohol), on the other hand, is a "bad" alcohol, it's highly toxic, metabolises into formaldehyde and formic acid, and can have severe degenerative effects on the retina and the central nervous system if drunk; the fumes alone aren't the cat's meow. isopropanol is somewhere in between, not quite as toxic as methanol, but more so than ethanol.

y'all probably knew this already, but i can be naive about things that never popped up on my radar: methanol appears to be a very typical thing industry puts into perfectly good ethanol to create "denatured alcohol" (which means "made unsuitable to drink"), to not have to pay the heavy taxes governments put on drinking alcohol.

i am probably really, really late with my upset, but this is outrageous. i can't get a small amount of clean alcohol to make perfume, instead i have a choice between stuff that's toxified or too thin, because my government thinks anyone who drinks booze ought to pay through the nose for it, and besides, we're apparently not adult enough to handle >40%. i wonder how many people end up in hospital each year drinking those toxified alcohols, and what that costs me, the tax payer, in turn; nevermind the human cost.

you know, that still i was talking about? now i am considering making my own alcohol. wanna bet it's illegal, even for personal use? those fuckers.

i'm clearly bucking the trend: the older i get, the more anarchist i turn, and the less respect i have for the overwheening nannydom of governments.

p.s. yes, i know i can use oils carriers rather than alcohol. but that's a different thing altogether.

Comments

[missakins.livejournal.com]

https://secure11.nexternal.com/shared/StoreFront/default.asp?CS=gallade&BusType=BtoC&Count1=216121852&Count2=133262276&ProductID=13178&Target=products.asp
(dunno if you've seen that link or not)

I work for fedex here, so if you want to order something that will only ship to a US address I can re-ship it for you if you want...

Let me know it's coming, the address is:
Mellissa Pottle
2049 Franklin Way
Marietta, GA 30067
678-887-9641
(work address)

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

thanks much for the offer! but no matter whether you reship it personally, it still has to cross the border and be subject to duty and taxes. cuz if you send it as a "gift" and they open it and find a litre of pure ethyl alcohol, they're probably gonna be ... displeased -- i wouldn't want to get anyone else in trouble. i have no idea what the consequences could be, especially since this also falls under special hazmat rules as a flammable substance. besides which the undenatured stuff is -- predictably -- just as expensive in the US as i expect it to be here.

btw, this isn't flocked; i don't know whether you're comfortable having your work address out in public; feel free to delete if that was an oversight.

[missakins.livejournal.com]

I would never send it as a gift, or a sample or whatever...With my discount on the shipping it'd be pretty cheap to ship, and there might be duties or whatever, but I was offering in the case that you found a US company that refused to ship to canada just on principle.

As far as the work address, it's not a big deal. It's not like I actually work there. :)

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

ok; just wanted to make sure. thanks again! that's pretty cool that you get a discount on shipping.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

From what I recall of working in labs, it required a special licence. They inspect your business to make sure the use is legit, and then you can purchase it legally.

One of the reasons it's controlled is because the risk of alcohol poisoning is extremely high if anybody did decide to try their luck.

[azarias.livejournal.com]

This feels like a stupid suggestions, but: have you tried using Everclear? It's about 95% straight grain alcohol, and is what stupid college students use to kill themselves at parties. It's also relatively cheap, since, again, it's popular with students.

[azarias.livejournal.com]

Though now that I look, it may be unavailable in Canada. Sorry.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

yeah, it seems to be one of the things from which the government protects us. don't be sorry for suggesting it!

[jinian.livejournal.com]

It's really annoying, I agree. Stills are apparently illegal here too, even for personal use, though fermenting stuff's all right. Aside from Everclear, I guess my main idea is to check around to see if anyone has a friend in a lab. We used 95% ethanol in my community college general chem class, though I don't think I would've been allowed to buy myself any.

chem class

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

yeah, even for personal use. that is what has me all up in arms right now. i realise people could hurt themselves, but people can hurt themselves with kitchen knives. education, not banning! *arrgh*. it's legal in NZ, for example, for personal use up to a certain amount.

i've been thinking of taking a couple chem class myself, actually. i really regret not having had more chemistry in highschool, and wouldn't mind acquiring a lot more knowledge in that area.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Have you tried anhydrous alcohol? You can buy the quantities you want from a chemical supply company. Sigma used to be really nice about selling to tiny little labs...I don't know about Sigma-Aldrich now. 500mL bottles are perfectly standard for experimental use. The ethanol is distilled with benzene, which makes it toxic for drinking, so you avoid the tax and regulatory problems of drinkable forms of alcohol. The benzene distillation process also gets rid of the last 5% of water, and anhydrous alcohol won't absorb moisture from air, though I doubt that matters to you. I can't smell any difference between 95% ethanol (5% water) and 99+% ethanol (trace benzene). The anhydrous ethanol isn't cheap, but I'm sure you can get a lot of it for less than the cost of setting up an illegal still, especially if you count your risks as "cost."

anhydrous alcohol

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

yeah, i read about that yesterday, and am considering it -- thanks for pointing it out! grumpily, i'm not liking benzene a whole lot either right now (its use in general, and the trace amounts of it that are in so very many things), and it does, of course, not remove my rantitude. :)

it's a interesting question whether i count my risks as cost. i think that building a one-time still for an experiment with alcohol that i'm neither gonna drink nor sell nor give away to other people, carries extremely little risk, especially when compared to the fun of experimenting (and a smidgen, i admit, of thumbing my nose at the government). i figure the cops here are too busy finding grow-ops to bust while dope is still illegal. of course, making public entries about it in my LJ is pretty idiotic if i wanted to minimise the risk. so maybe i shouldn't document the actual building, eh. :) that is, if i ever get around to it.

[king-tirian.livejournal.com]

No, it's not weapons-grade plutonium, but unperturbed 190 proof alcohol is just about as close as a marketable potable substance can come to a toxin. I'm sure it doesn't take many college students getting their throats burned out by straight Everclear shots before the government feels a responsibility to ruin it for everyone else.

Sheesh, apparently you can't even ship denatured alcohol out of the US now. Doesn't seem to be a Canadian distributor for any of the stuff to personal users like yourself. I say again, sheesh.

If you had your heart set on doing something illegal, a still is time-consuming and expensive and apparently difficult to get 190 proof anyway. Seems like less work to come down here and smuggle back some Everclear 190 in a gas can. Just to make things fun for you, "here" doesn't include Washington State, Oregon, or California because those are three of the four states that have completely outlawed grain. It's starting to sound like a remake of "Smokey and the Bandit".

[srunning.livejournal.com]

I'm going to have to stop by the liquor store because I've purchased grain alcohol in OR last year. Do you know when this changed? I use it for making liqueurs.

[king-tirian.livejournal.com]

I may have overspoken. The Everclear FAQ and online shopping pages like http://www.internetwines.com/pa25994.html both indicate that Everclear 190 cannot be sold in a bunch of states (the one that's not a 1991 FAQ says Washington, Oregon, California, and Pennsylvania). But I don't know if that's an Everclear thing, a grain thing, or a 190 proof thing. Google is quite unhelpful, as the Portland band is overshadowing any potential specific discussion of a state law.

[memorandis.livejournal.com]

I know this thread is dated, but I called a liquor store in Oregon and they do sell 190-proof Everclear. It's illegal in Washington and I don't think you can get it in Idaho.

smuggling

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

watch me not care about stupid people killing themselves. i am just really tired of being nannied. label the stuff, educate people, and let darwin sort the rest.

so far i found one online canadian distributor for denatured 190 proof ethanol in small amounts, but i'd have to be a certified teacher or home schooling parent for them to send me some. and then it's still poisonous, of course.

nope, not into smuggling at all; that's the sort of adventure i'd engage in for people in danger of their lives, not for a little experiment. besides which i don't even cross the US border these days with all my legal ducks in a row. if i were to do anything illegal, i'd feel much safer doing it in my own backyard. i also don't think building a small still needs to be expensive, and getting the juice to 190 proof can apparently easily be done with a fractionating column. adding the cost of a return trip to idaho plus the cost of the stress from smuggling and crossing the border under this bloody regime would end up feeling much more expensive than i expect a still would, even if i were to order it from NZ. :) and that would also be a lot less fun than building it myself!

there's actually heaps of info available online, especially from NZ where home distillation is legal. earlier today i've also come across some sites that talk about making ethanol as biofuel, though there we're definitely talking 55 gallon drum setup, *snicker*. mmmh, sawdust, sulphuric acid and yeast! sounds delish. i think i'll pay more attention to http://www.home-distiller.com/ instead.