Mysterious Deaths in Dominican Republic

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The news recently has focused on the risks associated with traveling to the Dominican Republic, where nine Americans died under mysterious circumstances. The deaths of several American tourists is having a dramatic effect on tourism at popular summer destinations such as Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica. HotelPlanner.com CEO Tim Hentschel indicated “We’re not sending them to Costa Rica, Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic, . . . Occupancies are down by double digits there.”

Well the deaths may not be so mysterious. They may be due to adulterated alcohol.

There are different types of alcohol - Methanol (wood alcohol), isopropyl alcohol or isopropanol (rubbing alcohol), and ethanol (booze). In an article that I read this morning:

Bootleggers, in the United States anyway, sometimes adulterate their products with deadly methanol. The goal isn't to kill their customers. Instead, the goal is to make their booze as cheaply as possible. If a bootlegger spikes his drink with ethanol that he purchased cheaply from a hardware store, he may not know (or he may know but doesn't care) that the ethanol is purposefully contaminated by the manufacturer with methanol in order to make it undrinkable. Giving this to a customer may inadvertently kill him.

While tasty ethanol is metabolized into acetaldehyde and acetic acid (vinegar), methanol is metabolized into formaldehyde and formic acid. These compounds can cause blindness, kidney damage, metabolic acidosis, and death.

[In the Dominican Republic] Anecdotal evidence suggested poisoning because some witnesses claimed that their loved ones fell ill after drinking from a resort mini-bar. [Add to this the fact that] CNN just reported that 19 people have died in Costa Rica from drinking alcohol adulterated with poisonous methanol.

So the deaths may not be as mysterious as first thought.

Source: Tainted Alcohol Kills 19 In Costa Rica. Did It Kill In Dominican Republic?

This really hits home considering how many Dominicans are in my extended family.

There were a few moonshiners in my family. Everything they made came from good corn mash, using glass and stainless steel equipment. Some of their competitors tried to undercut their sales by adding cheap industrial-grade ethanol (which contains methanol and other nasty stuff) to increase the volume, or benzene (a known carcinogen) to increase the ethanol content. Their product came to be known as "Skullpopper" due to the headaches people would get from drinking it.

As soon as I heard the words "drinking", "resort", and "headache" in the news reports, I had a strong suspicion that the victims had consumed adulterated liquor. I wonder if they checked for the tax seal on the liquor bottles, or just assumed they would be safe because the liquor came with the room. It likely doesn't take much effort to take some of the good stuff out of a liquor bottle, replace it with cheaper moonshine, and re-sell the siphoned contents for profit (or for the personal use of the liquor thieves).

I also suspect that more than one person was involved in this -- on such a massive scale, there has to at least be someone paid off to look the other way...

These countries need a whole agency to regulate libations.

France’s wine industry is regulated to the extent that there is an agency called the AOC (no, not *that* AOC) that tells growers what names they can use for wine.

Good reason to BYOB.

Was it fake booze that killed them?

At least 19 people have died since early June after drinking alcohol tainted with methanol in Costa Rica, prompting a national alert and widening the focus on the problem of bootleg liquor in Latin America.

The Costa Rican Health Ministry said in a preliminary report on Friday it counted 14 men and five women, ranging in age from 32 to 72, who've died after drinking adulterated liquor.

Donald Corella, head of emergency services at Calderon Guardia Hospital in San Jose, who was quoted in the Argentine daily newspaper La Nacion as saying some of the alcohol tested contained between 30 to 50 percent methanol.

"Most likely this is related to some type of manufacturing error, that when they were trying to make ethanol they accidentally made some methanol," Nampiaparampil said. "So that can happen in some counterfeit liquors."

Bootleg liquor has recently come under the microscope after the deaths of several Americans either during or soon after their stays at resorts in the Dominican Republic and establishments in Mexico.

Source: Tainted alcohol kills at least 19 in Costa Rica, health officials say


It looks a little interesting that in the photograph of the liquor bottles under the microscope as tainted, all of them had the same type of red top twist-off caps!!