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A 30-year-old woman named Bruna Araújo de Souza has become the third person to die from methanol poisoning in São Paulo, Brazil.
She fell ill after drinking vodka with peach juice at a bar and later died in hospital. Two men, Marcos Antônio Jorge Júnior and Ricardo Lopes Mira, also died recently from the same cause.
Health officials have reported 225 confirmed cases across Brazil, mostly in São Paulo, and have shut down 11 businesses while seizing more than 10,000 bottles of alcohol.
It is not yet known whether the contamination was deliberate or accidental.
Methanol, a toxic form of alcohol found in fuel and cleaning products, can be fatal even in small doses.
Authorities are warning people to avoid drinks without official labels or seals. The health minister called the crisis unprecedented in Brazil’s history. Similar outbreaks have occurred before, including one in Bahia in 1999 and another in Peru in 2022.
Methanol poisoning has occurred several times in the Caribbean, most notably in the Dominican Republic, where outbreaks linked to tainted or counterfeit alcohol have caused deaths in recent years, including one in 2017 that affected more than 40 people and another in 2019 that left several dead.
Similar warnings have been issued in Jamaica and other parts of the region, where unregulated or “bootleg” liquor sometimes contains toxic levels of methanol.
These incidents show that the problem of contaminated alcohol is not limited to one country and may be underreported throughout the Caribbean.
Methyl alcohol, also called methanol or wood alcohol, is a simple type of alcohol used in products like fuel, antifreeze, and cleaning fluids. It looks and smells much like regular drinking alcohol, but if it is drunk by humans, even in small quantities, it can cause blindness and death. Sometimes criminals use it to make cheap liquor.
Sources: BBC, Jamaica Observer, Food Safety News.
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