La Ville Methylated Spirit 500ml, at 70%v/v

Methylated spirits is a clear, colourless liquid that is commonly used across most industrial industries and is often used within the household. The methylated spirits boiling point is 78 °C and the flashpoint is 11 °C. Methylated spirits is often referred to as denatured alcohol which means that it contains a denaturant in it so it cannot be consumed. Sydney Solvents methylated spirits is 99% methylated spirits with a 1% bitrex in it. If it didn’t contain denaturant in the methylated spirits it would be classed as normal alcohol that is safe to drink.

What is Methylated Spirit?

Its Denatured alcohol and refers to alcohol that has additives in the product in order for it to be sold as a non-consumable and palatable product. This is because alcohol is used for a lot more uses than drinking, so to avoid the high tax and regulations on drinking alcohol, denatured alcohol was created for industrial, disinfecting and non-drinking uses. The additive in denatured alcohol has the most bitter taste known and is extremely poisonous and unpleasant smelling.

Methylated Spirits Uses

Denatured alcohol can be used to disinfectant, sterilise medical equipment, as a window cleaner, and there are many more uses. Methylated spirits are also perfect for indoor or outdoor methylated heaters. It is an effective solvent in the paints, lacquers and varnish industry. You will also find that it is found in a lot of cosmetics such as toners and makeup brush cleaners. It can be used as a window cleaner, spray and wipe disinfectant, and a steriliser.

Methylated Spirits Rubbing Alcohol

Methylated spirits can be used as rubbing alcohol when diluted down to about 65-70%. The reason it needs to be diluted down to this is so it is not as harsh on the skin and so it evaporates off slower in order to kill the bacteria. The higher the strength the more it will flash off but in the circumstance when you need to kill bacteria, sometimes the 70% works better as it has longer surface time, therefore, more time to kill the germs.

Toxicity

See also: List of methanol poisoning incidents and Harm reduction § Alcohol

Despite its poisonous content, denatured alcohol is sometimes consumed as a surrogate alcohol. This can result in blindness or death if it contains methanol. For instance, during the thirteen-year prohibition of alcohol in the US, federal law required methanol be added to domestically manufactured industrial alcohols. From 25–27 December 1926, which was roughly at the midpoint of nationwide alcohol prohibition, 31 people in New York City alone died of methanol poisoning.[4] To help prevent this, denatonium is often added to give the substance an extremely bitter flavour. Substances such as pyridine are added to give the mixture an unpleasant odour, and agents such as syrup of ipecac may also be included to induce vomiting.

New Zealand has removed methanol from its government-approved "methylated spirits" formulation.[5][6]

Diverse additives are used to make it difficult to use distillation or other simple processes to reverse the denaturation. Methanol is commonly used both because its boiling point is close to that of ethanol and because it is toxic. Another typical denaturant is pyridine. Often the denatured alcohol is dyed with methyl violet.[8]

There are several grades of denatured alcohol, but in general the denaturants used are similar. As an example, the formulation for completely denatured alcohol, according to 2005 British regulations was as follows:[9]