[rescue] good spring cleaning

Sandwich Maker adh at an.bradford.ma.us
Mon Aug 4 20:00:51 CDT 2003


"From: Andrew Weiss <ajwdsp at cloud9.net>
"
"On Sunday, August 3, 2003, at 09:29 PM, Daniel de Young wrote:
"
"> Should it be denatured alcohol or does it matter?
"
"Denatured refers to ethanol... this only means you can't swig it while 
"cleaning with it since it contains methanol and/or kereosene to 
"denature it (making it poison and undrinkable)... so it would be up to 
"you if you want to use ethanol to clean stuff whether or not you want 
"to drink it too.

it might also contain benzene [eg. lab grade anhydrous], which is a
liver toxin and carcinogen.  it smells a whole lot better than
isopropyl though.

OT trivia: know the origin lf the 'proof' scale of alcohol content?
it was the weakest liquor that would burn when poured over gunpowder
[so i heard] and lit, ~56% ethanol in water.  when finer ways of
measuring were devised, this was set to '100 proof'.  eventually the us
normalized the proof scale so that 200 is pure but the british [afaik]
never did; thus, gilbey's [for one] has two proof ratings on the
label.
________________________________________________________________________
Andrew Hay                                  the genius nature
internet rambler                            is to see what all have seen
adh at an.bradford.ma.us                       and think what none thought



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