Talk:Methanol economy

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[edit] Comparison to Ethanol

With Ethanol getting more and more news coverage, I think this article should have a section discussing the similarities and differences between using Ethanol vs using Methanol as a fuel. --Flatline 21:02, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

A highly irresponsible, non-evidentiary statement is made with regards to methanol's toxicity: "methanol is toxic (this risk has been hugely overstated; methanol poisoning invariably results from drinking illegal liquor; methanol volatilizes and biodegrades rapidly in the environment.)" Stating that methanol is toxic is like stating that strychnine is toxic: the hazard is there, intrinsic to the substance, though the dose may not be enough to induce any health effects (so you don't die from the volatilized strychnine sitting on a shelf across the room). Exposure studies and the developmental health literature has recently been synthesized by a panel of the National Toxicology Program, a part of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15995730&query_hl=8&itool=pubmed_docsum. --Faithandreason

I don't understand the reasoning for de-emphasizing the specific toxic endpoints associated with methanol exposure in the current (20 May 2006) version of the story, relative to the prior version. While a fuller discussion of the toxicity of methanol is available on the methanol entry, since the current article discusses "advantages and disadvantages" to an MeOH economy, an assessment of the relative benefits and costs of MeOH should be fully discussed. MeOH has known neurological (optic nerve) and developmental (e.g. neural tube closure) associations at relatively high doses, which may be experienced under accidental exposure conditions. It's worth doing a formal risk assessment of MeOH as a fuel, and compare those risks to the benefits. Only then can the relative costs and benefits be fully elucidated, under some uncertainty. The current text appears to imply that there is some controversy over MeOH toxicity. --Faithandreason