The Nonlinear Library LW - Legalize butanol? by bhauth
Dec 21, 2023
08:52
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Legalize butanol?, published by bhauth on December 21, 2023 on LessWrong.
ethanol
Alcoholic drinks are popular in most of the world. Excessive consumption of them is also a major public health problem. Bans have been attempted, sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully, but some people argue that alcohol plays a necessary role in social interactions.
Alcoholic drinks contain ethanol, which is metabolized to acetaldehyde, which is metabolized to acetate. In cells, ethanol is mostly unreactive but can bind to receptors. Acetaldehyde reacts with lots of stuff, mostly reversibly but sometimes irreversibly. Small amounts of acetate are essentially irrelevant, mostly providing calories.
Acetaldehyde can inactivate enzymes by causing crosslinking. Large amounts of it are generally bad. We can separate out the effects of ethanol itself and acetaldehyde by looking at people who metabolize acetaldehyde slowly.
About 50% of people of Northeast Asian descent have a dominant mutation in their acetaldehyde dehydrogenase gene, making this enzyme less effective, which causes the alcohol flush reaction, also known as Asian flush syndrome. A similar mutation is found in about 5-10% of blond-haired blue-eyed people of Northern European descent.
In these people, acetaldehyde accumulates after drinking alcohol, leading to symptoms of acetaldehyde poisoning, including the characteristic flushing of the skin and increased heart and respiration rates. Other symptoms can include severe abdominal and urinary tract cramping, hot and cold flashes, profuse sweating, and profound malaise. Individuals with deficient acetaldehyde dehydrogenase activity are far less likely to become alcoholics, but seem to be at a greater risk of liver damage, alcohol-induced asthma, and contracting cancers of the oro-pharynx and esophagus due to acetaldehyde overexposure.
Wikipedia
alternatives to ethanol
Ethanol is what's in drinks because it's produced naturally by a common type of fermentation, it prevents growth of most harmful microbes, and the yeast produced has some nutritional value. But our modern industrial civilization is no longer bound by such prosaic concerns. Can we do better?
ether
Studies, including that of an ether addict in 2003, have shown that ether causes dependence; however, the only symptom observed was a will to consume more ether. No withdrawal symptoms were prevalent.
Wikipedia
Diethyl ether has the same direct effect as ethanol, but mostly isn't metabolized in the body. Some of it gets metabolized (by a monooxygenase) by oxidation to (ethanol + acetaldehyde), but more of it gets exhaled. Thus, it's similar to what ethanol without acetaldehyde production would be like.
Diethyl ether isn't expensive to make, and there's lots of knowledge about its effects because it was widely consumed in the past. But it does have some problems:
It's volatile and has a strong smell, so it's obnoxious to other people.
It has fairly low water solubility, ~6%.
Above 2% in air, it's inflammable.
Pure diethyl ether exposed to oxygen can slowly form explosive peroxides.
It's already been banned most places, and unbanning things might be harder than not banning them.
butanol
At sub-lethal doses, 1-butanol acts as a depressant of the central nervous system, similar to ethanol: one study in rats indicated that the intoxicating potency of 1-butanol is about 6 times higher than that of ethanol, possibly because of its slower transformation by alcohol dehydrogenase.
Wikipedia
Some butanol occurs naturally in fermented products. Yeasts could be engineered to produce mostly butanol instead of ethanol, but the maximum practical concentration from fermentation is low, ~1%. If it's 6x as effective as ethanol, then 1% would be enough for drinks. It would then provide a similar effect to ethanol with less aldehyde pr...
ethanol
Alcoholic drinks are popular in most of the world. Excessive consumption of them is also a major public health problem. Bans have been attempted, sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully, but some people argue that alcohol plays a necessary role in social interactions.
Alcoholic drinks contain ethanol, which is metabolized to acetaldehyde, which is metabolized to acetate. In cells, ethanol is mostly unreactive but can bind to receptors. Acetaldehyde reacts with lots of stuff, mostly reversibly but sometimes irreversibly. Small amounts of acetate are essentially irrelevant, mostly providing calories.
Acetaldehyde can inactivate enzymes by causing crosslinking. Large amounts of it are generally bad. We can separate out the effects of ethanol itself and acetaldehyde by looking at people who metabolize acetaldehyde slowly.
About 50% of people of Northeast Asian descent have a dominant mutation in their acetaldehyde dehydrogenase gene, making this enzyme less effective, which causes the alcohol flush reaction, also known as Asian flush syndrome. A similar mutation is found in about 5-10% of blond-haired blue-eyed people of Northern European descent.
In these people, acetaldehyde accumulates after drinking alcohol, leading to symptoms of acetaldehyde poisoning, including the characteristic flushing of the skin and increased heart and respiration rates. Other symptoms can include severe abdominal and urinary tract cramping, hot and cold flashes, profuse sweating, and profound malaise. Individuals with deficient acetaldehyde dehydrogenase activity are far less likely to become alcoholics, but seem to be at a greater risk of liver damage, alcohol-induced asthma, and contracting cancers of the oro-pharynx and esophagus due to acetaldehyde overexposure.
Wikipedia
alternatives to ethanol
Ethanol is what's in drinks because it's produced naturally by a common type of fermentation, it prevents growth of most harmful microbes, and the yeast produced has some nutritional value. But our modern industrial civilization is no longer bound by such prosaic concerns. Can we do better?
ether
Studies, including that of an ether addict in 2003, have shown that ether causes dependence; however, the only symptom observed was a will to consume more ether. No withdrawal symptoms were prevalent.
Wikipedia
Diethyl ether has the same direct effect as ethanol, but mostly isn't metabolized in the body. Some of it gets metabolized (by a monooxygenase) by oxidation to (ethanol + acetaldehyde), but more of it gets exhaled. Thus, it's similar to what ethanol without acetaldehyde production would be like.
Diethyl ether isn't expensive to make, and there's lots of knowledge about its effects because it was widely consumed in the past. But it does have some problems:
It's volatile and has a strong smell, so it's obnoxious to other people.
It has fairly low water solubility, ~6%.
Above 2% in air, it's inflammable.
Pure diethyl ether exposed to oxygen can slowly form explosive peroxides.
It's already been banned most places, and unbanning things might be harder than not banning them.
butanol
At sub-lethal doses, 1-butanol acts as a depressant of the central nervous system, similar to ethanol: one study in rats indicated that the intoxicating potency of 1-butanol is about 6 times higher than that of ethanol, possibly because of its slower transformation by alcohol dehydrogenase.
Wikipedia
Some butanol occurs naturally in fermented products. Yeasts could be engineered to produce mostly butanol instead of ethanol, but the maximum practical concentration from fermentation is low, ~1%. If it's 6x as effective as ethanol, then 1% would be enough for drinks. It would then provide a similar effect to ethanol with less aldehyde pr...