Tires Tire ballast warning

[Smokeydog]

Doing general maintenance on the little Kubota B26 and finish mower this afternoon. Greasing, sharpening and checking tire air pressure. The usual loss of a few pounds pressure over a years time. Checking the last tire, left rear, which has methanol ballast. Grabbed the metal cap and began unscrewing after some initial resistance. What I didn’t notice was the two part valve stem was unscrewing. When it came apart I was sprayed with a stream of methanol. Quickly screwed back together after the initial flood. Washed face and hands. Used pliers to tighten and aired up. Shirt and pant leg soaked. 1/2 mile from the house. Put the tools up and drove to put tractor up and get truck to go home. Took a good shower.

Bigger tractors and especially with calcium chloride ballast always took more attention. Not paying adequate attention my fault.

Methanol in the concentration of washer fluid is not too toxic outside the body. Nothing you want to drink or keep in contact with skin. The usual treatment for methanol or ethylene glycol which the body breaks down into methanol, ingestion is to flush with ethanol. This usually administered IV. Usually above the feel good blood alcohol concentration to the I’ll never drink again level. The ethanol helps to flush the kidneys before the methanol reaches high enough toxic level to kill kidney cells. Necrosis of kidney tissue is how methanol kills.

Just to be on safe side, ingested a couple of shots of vodka and drinking plenty of fluids just in case. My wife and I rarely imbibe but keep some spirits around for emergencies and guests. I’ll finish work on the tractor tomorrow.

 

[LouNY]

Good excuse to stop work early and have a couple of shots.
It's not going to hurt you as you didn't drink it.

 

[dodge man]

I got some grease on my hands yesterday, should I have done a couple of shots? Just joking, glad you weren’t hurt.

 

[Smokeydog]

I’ve got several 300 year old log cabin, house, barn timbers. To help preserve them a termite business recommended boracare in addition to ground treatment. At the time it was $100/gal plus $100 to apply. 30 gallons to start, $6,000. Often used in log structures now.
I made it at a fraction of price from ethylene glycol, 20 mule team borax and boric acid powder. Had to slowly cook in batches to break the waters of hydration and make a borate solution easily absorb by wood. Made 75 gallons. After spraying batches with PPE, shower and would self doctor just to be safe.
I’m sure now it would raise eyebrows to checkout in Walmart with buggies full of antifreeze and 20 mule team borax.
It’s a permanent non ground contact, less toxic to animals, effective bug and fungi killer. Maybe last another couple 100 years.

 

[mo1]

Methanol in the concentration of washer fluid is not too toxic outside the body. Nothing you want to drink or keep in contact with skin. The usual treatment for methanol or ethylene glycol which the body breaks down into methanol, ingestion is to flush with ethanol. This usually administered IV. Usually above the feel good blood alcohol concentration to the I’ll never drink again level. The ethanol helps to flush the kidneys before the methanol reaches high enough toxic level to kill kidney cells. Necrosis of kidney tissue is how methanol kills.

Just to be on safe side, ingested a couple of shots of vodka and drinking plenty of fluids just in case. My wife and I rarely imbibe but keep some spirits around for emergencies and guests. I’ll finish work on the tractor tomorrow.

There is quite a bit of the above that is incorrect.

- Ethylene glycol does not turn into methanol in the body. It turns into oxalic acid, which as you stated, causes kidney failure.

- Methanol turns into formaldehyde, which turns into formic acid. Formic acid is highly toxic, and its toxicity comes from causing swelling and bleeding in the central nervous system. This is why blindness (from optic nerve swelling) is often seen in methanol poisoning. This is different from what the oxalic acid in ethylene glycol poisoning does to the body.

- Methanol and ethylene glycol poisoning have the same specific antidote as the same liver enzyme (alcohol dehydrogenase) is involved in a portion of the metabolism of each chemical into its highly toxic metabolite. However, the current specific antidote for ethylene glycol or methanol poisoning in this country is fomepizole, not ethanol. Fomepizole inhibits alcohol dehydrogenase (prevents it from working), and thus the methanol or ethylene glycol gets excreted in the urine before they can be turned into their toxic metabolites.

- IV ethanol was used in the past before fomepizole was invented and essentially saturated alcohol dehydrogenase so that there was very little enzyme capacity remaining to convert ethylene glycol or methanol into their toxic metabolites, and the methanol and ethylene glycol were excreted unchanged in the urine. However, ethanol is almost never used in medicine today in this country except as a low-level disinfectant, such as in hand sanitizer. It has been replaced by medications with fewer side effects for the few things it has been used to treat in the past.

 

[IrishLoader]

- Methanol turns into formaldehyde, which turns into formic acid. Formic acid is highly toxic, and its toxicity comes from causing swelling and bleeding in the central nervous system. This is why blindness (from optic nerve swelling) is often seen in methanol poisoning. This is different from what the oxalic acid in ethylene glycol poisoning does to the body.

Not a Master Distiller by any stretch, but pretty sure this is the reason for a lot of cases of blindness during the Prohibition era.

 

[mo1]

Not a Master Distiller by any stretch, but pretty sure this is the reason for a lot of cases of blindness during the Prohibition era.

That is correct. It still happens, there was a case of adulterated alcohol being sold from vending machines in Russia a few years ago that killed quite a few people.