Drinking habits

I'm waiting for him to point out that Islay malts are even more dangerous than he previously thought due to them containing high levels of Dihydrogen monoxide, a seriously dangerous chemical in a wide variety of ways.

Dangers associated with it include (but are not limited to):

Death due to accidental inhalation of DHMO, even in small quantities. Prolonged exposure to solid DHMO causes severe tissue damage. Excessive ingestion produces a number of unpleasant though not typically life-threatening side-effects. DHMO is a major component of acid rain. Gaseous DHMO can cause severe burns. Contributes to soil erosion. Leads to corrosion and oxidation of many metals. Contamination of electrical systems often causes short-circuits. Exposure decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes. Found in biopsies of pre-cancerous tumors and lesions. Given to vicious dogs involved in recent deadly attacks. Often associated with killer cyclones in the U.S. Midwest and elsewhere, and in hurricanes including deadly storms in Florida, New Orleans and other areas of the southeastern U.S. Thermal variations in DHMO are a suspected contributor to the El Nino weather effect.

As you can see, a major problem - and some people even _add more_ to their whisky! Sometimes they even add it in a way that will undergo a state-change during consumption. Madness.

Jim

Not much of this is worth responding to (and much of the name-calling is predicated on the following falsehood), but:

The people at Poison Control are your friends. Really. Make friends with them. Here's their mission statement.

********** Poison Control

The National Poison Control Center (1-800-222-1222) can be called from anywhere in the United States. This national hotline number will let you talk to experts in poisoning. They will give you further instructions.

This is a free and confidential service. All local poison control centers in the U.S. use this national number. You should call if you have any questions about poisoning or poison prevention. It does NOT need to be an emergency. You can call for any reason, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

**********

I had a question about poison prevention. It was not an emergency. I called, and said "this is not an emergency call". The person said, "OK, how can I help you?"

You don't know the half of it! Some congeners are soluble in ethanol and

*not* in the dreaded DHMO! When you add water, and watch it pass, glycerin-like, through the amber dram, you can actually see honest, non- trolling and hardworking chemicals fleeing in terror! ‹(•¿•)› They deserve better. NO MORE DHMO! NO MORE DHMO! Hold on a mo, my throat is getting dry from all this shouting....

Aiiigh!

"Joshua McGee" skrev i melding news:VaCKj.267$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe05.lga...

Who ever in this ng has denied that?? And if I remember correctly, you said in your first post that 1L of whisky in a single night was not unheard of? Good heavens, a litre a day would be harmful even if we were talking about orange juice! But the possible dangers of ethanol consumption in general - that wasn't your topic here to begin with, was it?

Gunnar

Not really. I object, for example, to you characterizing my posts as baiting, when all I'm doing is responding to your claims. If anything, I have responded to your bait.

And I see you are using that to avoid dealing with the substance of my replies to you.

Good.

It has been clear all along.

This is where we started, approximately. You made an outrageous claim without providing any evidence.

Fine.

That doesn't mean much to me. People have died from drinking too much carrot juice. Many things can have toxic effects in large enough quantities.

That's certainly what got us started.

Entirely without citations, an expert opinion, a scholarly paper. In the absence of supporting information, it is mere nonsense.

Shrug.

Nice try on turning the tables, but I'm tired of responding to unsupported claims. If you want to persist in discussing that subject, you will have to provide the substance yourself, and you can expect it to be read critically.

As always.

Your characterizations of what has gone on are so far removed from my perceptions of it that further discussion is futile. Perhaps that is similar to a truce. I'll be reading future posts with interest.

Rajmund,

You have not seen the levels of depravity and debauchery some so-called "fans" or "connoisseurs" undertake at marathon tasting sessions, in certain Nevada cities not to be mentioned.

Granted, I have never consumed a litre of Islay whisky in one go, and, if I tried, it would probably kill me.

But some acquaintances -- I cannot call them friends -- play a rather depraved game called "DYA" -- Dram Your Age. The person would, in one evening, sample one malt for every year of his life. They were not 5ml teaspoons, they were actual drinking samples of about 30 - 40 ml apiece. And -- get this -- he was saving one of *my* contributions (a Bowmore Ceramic Sea Dragon) to be his "last one". That year, I believe he was 48 years old. There is a picture with him holding my bottle and posing for posterity, as if this is something of which to be proud.

Hence my frustration that there are intellectual single aficionados, and then there are alcoholics who hide behind the pretense of a hobby.

Also, I drink a litre per day of juice, personally.

Er, that would be Bill, wouldn't it?

**************

No, that's not acceptable. You tried to float this earlier. I certainly thought it was a clever joke, but it has been well discredited.

**************

I have not selectively edited. That is word-for-word the exchange we had. *What* has been discredited? That ethanol is a metabolic toxin? That's how I read it. Ethanol is a metabolic toxin. That certain congeners in Islay malts are toxic? They are. I have provided citations. What does Bill believe he is so deftly refuting?

One more comment struck a chord:

Change that slightly: it's a strange way to *re-join* the discussion, in which I was active for several years during a different, less abusive regime. And one wonders why the old guard have left.... Actually, the answers are fairly immediately evident.

Enjoy your thread. Apparently I've convinced three grown men that I'm the playground bully and Ardbeg is their old man, and they have come at me swinging. I'm not a crusader, and I don't like being pushed into roles I have not chosen for myself. Enjoy your whisky. Be careful and try not to die. Thanks.

[unsubscribing for next 3-5 years, to see if nature takes its logical course]

There's not a lot on the internet that I find more annoying than someone who feels they have to announce that they are leaving. Just go. Don't let the cyber-door hit you in the ass on your way out.

Gladys.

Agreed. DHMO is so dangerous I'm surprised they still allow it to be used in the production of Whisky, Whiskey, and _baby food_ believe it or not. dhmo.org is a good resource on that particular nasty.

I'll admit to a bit of DHMO once in a while, but the state-change technique is bad business.

About poisoning. Not about "I'm too lazy to read an MSDS".

Still abuse of a system intended for serious reasons, not for you getting called on an erroneous usenet statement.

Interesting that you evade the entirity of my post. Do I understand correctly, then, that you accept and acknowledge the corrections provided therein?

Or did you just pretend to ignore them because I pointed out the reality that your math and methods continue to be flawed. I have a guess which it is.

You keep saying it butyou keep not doing it (shrug). Either way, as long as you stop lying, that's good enough, isn't it?

I like my C2H5OH mixed with about 3 parts DHMO. About 140 grams of C2H5OH daily.

Also see

No. He means that our little disagreement was about phenol, not ethanol. You brought up ethanol late in the thread, presumably as another red herring.

None of that is true. You made an outrageous claim about a lethal dose of ethanol, which was shown to be incorrect. That, and your subsequent attempts to muddy the waters, are the reasons this discussion took place at all.

And of course you have selectively edited. Each time you responded you snipped all the material that showed you to be wrong in your previous post.

In this post, you actually edited out the paragraph to which you were responding. How clever is that?

Ha. They wouldn't have put up with your nonsense any more than we have.

More distortion. No one has called you a bully. You posted nonsense; it was challenged. You seem to be chronically unable to represent

*anything* honestly.

We'll miss you terribly.

I, for one, thank Joshua for his efforts. For those of you who are lurking on this rather murky thread, here are a couple of links that I found interesting:

Take care.

Mike Russell - mike.russell-home.net

I can't claim to have been lurking, exactly. But this one *is* interesting. Essentially, it confirms that there are phenolic compounds in single malt whisky and describes how they get there.

It told me something I didn't know before: The concentration of phenols in the whisky is only 30 to 50 per cent of the concentration in the barley. A typical Ardbeg, whose barley is at 54 ppm phenols, contains only 17 to 24 ppm of phenols once it is distilled. So in the calculations I have been using in this thread, the concentration of phenols in the whisky has to be cut by half or more.

It says nothing about harmful effects, if any.

This one is not easily penetrable, but note its conclusion:

"12. The Tolerable Daily Intake for ingested phenol is therefore 0.7 mg/kg bw/day."

So at my body weight, 90 kg or 200 pounds, the "tolerable daily intake" of phenols is 90 X 0.7, or 63 mg per day.

Now, assuming Ardbeg has the same weight per liter as water (it's probably slightly more or slightly less, but it's certainly in the ball park) then a liter of Ardbeg will contain up to 24 mg of phenols. That means my safe intake of Ardbeg per day is approximately two and a half liters.

Since I've never drunk more than one-twentieth of that amount in a single day, I'd say I'm reasonably safe. Even Joshua, who told us that a liter(!) in one session was not unusual in his circle, is in safe territory.

Also from that site:

"Any risk to human health by ingestion would be likely to be greatly reduced by rapid conjugation and detoxification via the glutathione pathway."

(Glutathione is an antioxidant that neutralizes many potentially problematic molecules in the human body.)

So the actual safe level of Ardbeg is probably well in excess of 2.5 liters per day. I'd say this was good news, but really, it seems a bit academic.

You too, Mike.

cheers.

Does this mean I can go back to drinking my Islay malts without fear that one good fart may blow my liver right out my rear end?

If so...then cheers!

"Daniel" skrev i melding news:jr%2k.1922$ snipped-for-privacy@bignews4.bellsouth.net...

Sure thing! I had forgotten all about it, but it's a good reason to hoist a dram - I have a Ardbeg Airigh Nam Beist I haven't emptied yet... cheers Daniel and all ;^)