Current Context : After consuming hooch or spurious liquor, nearly 50 people have died and around 100 others have been hospitalised in Tamil Nadu’s, Kallakurichi.

ABOUT

• Hooch is a commonly used term for poor quality alcohol, derived from Hoochinoo, a native Alaskan tribe that was known to produce very strong liquor.
• It is also known as wood alcohol.
• It appears as a colorless fairly volatile liquid with a faintly sweet pungent odor like that of ethyl alcohol.
• It contains methanol, an industrial alcohol which is highly toxic for human beings.
• Methanol has a boiling point of 7 °C, lower than that of ethanol 78.37 °C.
• Methanol is a toxic alcohol that is used industrially as a solvent, pesticide and alternative fuel source.