Control the alcohol market
The Department of Food Safety (Ministry of Health) has just issued an official dispatch on strengthening food safety and preventing food poisoning for alcohol products.
Recently, there have been a number of food poisoning cases related to the use of alcohol products, causing many people to be hospitalized, affecting the health and psychology of consumers. In order to promptly prevent the risk of food poisoning related to alcohol and warn the community, especially in the preparation period for the Lunar New Year 2025, the Food Safety Department requests the Department of Science and Technology - Ministry of Industry and Trade to implement the following contents:
Directing the competent authorities of the Industry and Trade sector in localities to strengthen inspections, checks, and surprise checks of alcohol production and trading establishments, focusing on small-scale alcohol production and trading establishments, and craft alcohol brewing establishments. Timely prevent unsafely produced and mixed alcohol, alcohol of unknown origin, and alcohol without labels from circulating on the market, causing risks to consumers' health.
Strengthen propaganda on mass media about the risks of unsafe alcohol use; guide alcohol production and trading establishments to ensure food safety conditions, manage the origin of alcohol production materials, and strictly implement legal regulations on ensuring food safety. Raise consumer awareness when choosing and using alcohol, absolutely do not use alcohol products of unknown origin, label, or source.
Alcohol of unknown origin destroys health
Dr. Nguyen Trung Nguyen - Director of the Poison Control Center, Bach Mai Hospital - said: When industrial alcohol methanol enters the body, it will turn into formic acid, causing damage to organs, especially the optic nerve and brain. Initially, methanol is not as difficult to drink as people think, it even tastes a bit sweet, and drinking it causes intoxication similar to regular alcohol, so it is easily overlooked. However, it is very dangerous later, methanol metabolizes slowly, discreetly and causes damage to organs in the body. When it shows signs on the outside, it has already caused a lot of damage, even loss of organ function or death.
In reality in Vietnam, one reason is that methanol poisoning is so dangerous and silent, combined with the fact that people drink fake alcohol without knowing it, so going to the hospital is often too late, severe, and the mortality rate is very high, about 30-50%.
“A large number of people who drink methanol do not show immediate external symptoms, but inside the methanol has been metabolized and poisoned, damaging and killing part of the optic nerve and part of the brain. Because the brain and eyes are not completely damaged, there is still a normal part to function and try to compensate, so the outside still looks normal.
However, these people will soon lose their vision and suffer from neurological sequelae such as Parkinson's or movement disorders. This means that the life expectancy of these people with normal health will be shortened. For normal people, it may take until they are 80-90 years old for their eyes to become blurry and their legs to become slow. But for those who drink methanol, if they do not die now, it is likely that by the age of 50-60, their eyes will become blurry and their legs will become slow," Dr. Nguyen analyzed.
In fact, through many cases of industrial methanol poisoning, the Center has always witnessed different levels of poisoning. In addition to deaths and severe poisoning cases, the Center also encountered cases with normal symptoms but when actively tested, the concentration of industrial methanol in the blood was very high and blood filtration and detoxification were required, otherwise these patients would certainly lose part of their eyes and brain.
