We take many things in life for granted. Windshield-washer fluid, for example. Only when we can’t get any do we realize how important it is. Driving around peering through a dirty windshield is no fun. And it’s dangerous. Thank goodness for methanol!
Water is a pretty good cleaning agent for windows. That is, as long as it stays in its liquid form. Unfortunately, since winter temperatures tend to be below freezing, we have to do something to lower the freezing point of water if we want to spray it on windshields. This is actually not that hard to do. Dissolving anything in water lowers its freezing point. Surprisingly, what is dissolved is not that important, but rather how much of it is dissolved. The number of molecules or ions present in solution is what determines the freezing point. These get in between water molecules and prevent them from coalescing to form crystals. Salt or sugar could be used, but either would be impractical. The solution would not freeze, but a deposit of the solute would be left on the windshield as the water evaporated. What is needed, therefore, is a liquid that easily mixes with water and readily evaporates. Methanol is ideal. It even has the added bonus of being a good cleaning agent. Grease, road tar, and bird droppings yield to its solvent power.
Experiments show that if we want to be able to see through the windshield down to -40°C (-40°F), we need a mix of roughly 40 percent methanol and 60 percent water. A little detergent is added, along with a blue dye. The dye serves two purposes. Market studies have shown that people generally associate this color with cleaning action (just think of toilet bowl cleaners), but more importantly, it identifies the solution as unfit for consumption. A good thing, because methanol can be deadly!
The North American public first became aware of the dangers of methanol during the Prohibition era. The Volstead Act, which operated in the us between 1917 and 1933, outlawed alcoholic beverages. Prohibitionists believed that alcohol was a major cause of crime and delinquency. The extremism of the movement was astounding in some cases. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union urged schoolteachers to put a calf’s brain in a jar of alcohol and show students how it turned from pink to gray. The kids were to be told that alcohol would do the same to their brains. Government agents regularly shot bootleggers and destroyed innocent people’s property in their search for illegal booze. Not only was crime not curtailed by Prohibition, it flourished. Al Capone fitted his competitors with cement shoes while he made a fortune bootlegging. Illegal stills were everywhere, and the distribution of their produce was laced with crime. But even more disturbing was the fact that the illegal liquor was often laced with methanol. At the time, though, it was called “methyl alcohol.”
The alcohol we normally consume in beverages is “ethyl alcohol.” When this was made illegal, anything that had the name “alcohol” was pressed into service. Methyl alcohol had been known since the seventeenth century, when Robert Boyle discovered it as a component in the mixture of substances he obtained by heating wood in the absence of air. The term “methyl alcohol” was coined by Dumas, a French chemist, in 1834, from the Greek “methe” for wine and “hyle” for wood. Methyl alcohol was considered to be the “wine of wood.” Not the kind of wine anyone would want to drink. Like ethyl alcohol, it did have an inebriating effect. But it had another effect as well. Death. A shot glass full would do it. If the imbiber was lucky, he only went blind.
Until Prohibition, though, there was not much of a motivation to adulterate beverages with methyl alcohol. There was no need. Ethyl alcohol was plentiful. But when the crunch came, methyl alcohol began to seep in to fill the ethyl void. It was readily available, since chemical plants in Europe and America were cranking it out, mostly through Boyle’s original “destructive distillation” process. Methyl alcohol was used as an industrial solvent and as a raw material for the synthesis of other compounds, such as formaldehyde. In many cases, it was easier for criminals to get their hands on methyl alcohol than it was for them to set up moonshine stills. They figured that any customers who overindulged wouldn’t be around to complain about the substitution anyway. During Prohibition, thousands were killed and blinded by adulterated booze. Some poor souls believed that the liquor could be made safe by filtering it through a loaf of bread. They often paid for this belief with their lives. Finally, the government stepped in. How? Officials urged chemical companies to abandon the term “methyl alcohol” in favor of “methanol.” Maybe, if the name did not include “alcohol,” people would be less inclined to think of it as a substitute intoxicant.
The repeal of Prohibition brought an end to the epidemic of methanol deaths, but sporadic poisonings do still occur. In Egypt, methanol, because it is cheap, is sometimes added to regular liquor to boost its alcohol content. This makes for an especially dangerous situation because the presence of ethyl alcohol postpones the effects of the methanol so that the drinker may keep drinking longer. A teacher at the American University of Cairo died after consuming a fair bit of adulterated Egyptian vodka. But we don’t have to travel to Egypt to hear of such tragedies. They happen right here. Two men in Kingston, Ontario, overdosed on windshield-washer fluid. They had gone to a party where they drank what they thought was vodka punch. It was made with Kool-Aid, root beer, and the contents of a jug that a youngster had snitched from his father, thinking it was vodka. Apparently, the man had a clever little smuggling scheme going. He added blue dye to vodka and brought it across the border in windshield-washer fluid jugs, which he then stored in his garage. Tragically, he also kept real windshield-washer fluid there. That’s what his son picked up by mistake. He had wanted to add life to the party, but instead served up death.
A similar event occurred in Hare Bay, Newfoundland, where a teenager died and others were hospitalized after drinking what they apparently thought was moonshine. It was methanol-based antifreeze. In order to avert such tragedies, there is talk of manufacturers adding a chemical with a distinct smell to windshield-washer fluid for easy recognition.
Today, most methanol is made by the “synthesis gas” process. Natural gas, which is mostly methane, is heated with steam to produce a mix of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen, known as “syngas.” This syngas can be converted to methanol in the presence of a special zinc oxide/chromium oxide catalyst. Why is it manufactured? Because methanol has numerous uses. It can be added to gasoline to increase burning efficiency; in fact, Indy cars run on pure methanol. It can also be converted into methyl-t-butyl ether (MTBE), which is added to gasoline in some areas to provide oxygen for better combustion in order to produce less pollution. MTBE is somewhat controversial because it can get into groundwater through the leakage of underground gasoline tanks. Some people have also complained of headaches, dizziness, and nausea when it is released into the air from gasoline. It likely will be phased out, much to the concern of the methanol industry.
Shortages in windshield-washer fluid are typically due to unusually heavy demand caused by bad weather. While methanol is readily made from natural gas, windshield antifreeze producers can only bottle so much of the product. Is there a substitute? There sure is. Ethyl alcohol will do. Vodka has just about the right concentration to offer protection on the coldest days. So, you see, people who maintain that vodka is good against the cold are right.