conversion to formaldehyde and formate,
allowing the body time to excrete methanol in the breath
and urine. Inhibition is seen in vitro even when the
concentration of ethyl alcohol was only 1/16th that
of methanol. The inhibitory effect is a linear function
of the log of the ethyl alcohol concentration, with
a 72% inhibition rate at only a 0.01 molar concentration
of ethanol.
Oxidation of methanol, like that of ethanol, proceeds
independently of the blood concentration, but a rate
only one seventh to one fifth that of ethanol.
Folacin may play an important role in the metabolism
of methanol by catalyzing toe elimination of formic
acid. If this process proves to be a protective for
humans as has been shown in other organisms it may
account, in part for the tremendous variability of
human responses to acute methanol toxicity. Folacin
in a nutrient often found lacking in the normal human
diet, particularly during pregnancy and lactation.
METHANOL CONTENT OF ASPARTAME SWEETENED BEVERAGES
An average aspartame-sweetened beverage would have
a conservative aspartame content of a bout 555 mg/liter,
and therefore, a methanol equivalent of 56 mg/liter
(56 ppm). For example, if a 25 kg child consumed on
a warm day, after exercising, two-thirds of a two-liter
bottle of soft drink sweetened with aspartame, that
child would be consuming over 732 mg of aspartame
(29 mg/kg). This alone exceeds what the Food and drug
Administration considers the 99 - percentile daily
consumption level of aspartame. The child would also
absorb over 70 mg of methanol from that soft drink.
This is almost ten times the Environmental Protection
Agency's recommended daily limit of consumption for
methanol.
To look at the issue from another perspective, the
literature reveals death from consumption of the equivalent
of 6 gm of methanol. It would take 200 12 oz. cans
of soda to yield the lethal equivalent of 6 gm of
methanol According to FDA regulations, compounds added
to foods that are found to cause some adverse health
effect at a particular usage level are actually permitted
in foods only at much lower levels. The FDA has established
these requirements so that an adequate margin of safety
exists to protect particularly sensitive people and
heavy consumers of the chemical. Section 170.22 of
Title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations mandates
that this margin of safety be 100-fold below the "highest
no-effect" level has tragically not been determined
for methanol, but assuming very conservatively that
the level is one tenth of the lethal dose, the FDA
regulations should have limited consumption to approximately
2.4 ounces of aspartame sweetened soft drink per day,
The FDA allows a lower safety margin only when "evidence
is submitted which justifies use of a different safety
factor." (21.C.F.R. 170.22) No such evidence
has been submitted to the FDA for methanol. Thus,
not only have the FDA's requirements for...
