China News Agency, Beijing, June 16 (Reporter Sun Zifa) How to conveniently and quickly detect whether alcoholic beverages contain toxic amounts of methanol? A recent technical research paper published by Nature Scientific, an international academic journal of Nature Research, said that Swiss researchers have developed a portable device that helps prevent methanol poisoning, which is an alternative solution.
According to the paper, the researchers developed a palm-sized portable test device that can be used in conjunction with smartphone applications to test the level of methanol in alcoholic beverages. This system allows consumers, breweries, law enforcement and health workers to easily check whether alcoholic beverages contain toxic amounts of methanol, helping to avoid fatal methanol poisoning.
The corresponding author of the paper, Andreas Güntner of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and Sotiris Pratsinis of the Zurich Particle Technology Laboratory and colleagues have developed a cheap and capable Handheld analyzer compatible with smart phones, can quickly detect methanol and ethanol. The device is based on a sensor they designed before, and when it is placed above an open container, the sensor can absorb steam or gas samples of wine. Since the processing speeds of methanol and ethanol are different, they can be tested in sequence. Afterwards, the application will display the methanol and ethanol levels and indicate whether the methanol has reached a potentially harmful level.
In order to test the accuracy of this convenient detection device, the authors tested 89 alcoholic beverages with known methanol levels. The results showed that the device can accurately detect methanol for 107 consecutive days.
Nature Research released a press release of the above research results to the media that pointed out that alcoholic beverages are sometimes intentionally doped with cheap methanol to increase profits and beverage stiffness. In addition, improper brewing or distillation can also cause methanol to accumulate in alcoholic beverages. . From 2017 to 2019, there were 306 recorded cases of methanol poisoning, affecting about 7104 people and causing 1888 deaths. 90% of methanol poisonings occur in Asia. Currently, the gold standard for methanol detection is liquid chromatography—separating and measuring different types of chemicals in a mixture, but this method is time-consuming and expensive. (Finish)