Hi All,
Very interesting discussion! It’s motivated me to have a comparative look. Below is a list of 17 alcohols with an indicator of their toxicities, their LD50 oral, rat. 1 of these alcohols was taken from
www.jpet.aspetjournals.org/content/115/2/230.abstract, some others from
www.toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/49/1/133.pdf and the remainder, ones already in suggested in this thread and other similar alcohols on this board. Better of all would be some sort of index of intoxication, which is not only hard information to come by, but also a bit of a vague parameter. I’ll talk about this at the end. As a comparator, ethanol is around 7g/kg but some studies indicate around 10g/kg, methanol is listed as 5.6g/kg (I always thought methanol was 5 times as toxic as ethanol, go figure!)
1) 1-propanol 8g/kg
2) isopropanol 4.4g/kg
3) 1-butanol 4.3g/kg
4) 1-pentanol 2.2g/kg
5) 1-hexanol 0.72g/kg [another study says 3.1-4.9g/kg]
6) 1-heptanol 3.25g/kg
7) 1-octanol 3.2g/kg
8) 2-methyl 2-butanol 1g/kg
9) 3-methyl 3-pentanol 0.71g/kg
10)2-methyl 2-propanol 3.5g/kg (tert-butanol)
11)2-methyl 2-propen-1-ol no oral data
12)2-methyl 3-buten-2-ol 1.8g/kg
13)3-methyl 2-buten-1-ol 0.81g/kg
14)2-methylbut-3-yn-2-ol 1.95g/kg (3-methyl butynol)
15)3-methyl 1-pentyn-3-ol 0.3g/kg
16)1-ethynyl cyclohexanol 0.585g/kg
17)2-phenyl 2-butanol 1.4g/kg
Now the only data I can find regarding intoxication volume-for-volume parameters is roughly this:
1-propanol ~2-4 times
isopropanol ~2.5 times
1-butanol ~9 times
2-methyl 2-butanol ~17 times
1-ethynyl cyclohexanol ~50 times (based on bluelight reports)
which results in an intoxication-toxic (compared to ethanol 10g/kg) index of
2.4 for 1-propanol
1.1 for isopropanol
3.8 for 1-butanol
1.7 for 2-methyl 2-butanol
2.9 for 1-ethynyl cyclohexanol
making so far, 1-butanol, 1-propanol and 1-ethynyl cyclohexanol clearly more preferable than ethanol to consume. Whether or not the LD50 oral, rat is the best parameter against which to judge toxicity is a major question here. For instance, the ratio indicates that isopropanol is about equal to ethanol. Somehow that’s not convincing enough for me to make a regular switch. There needs to be some sort of consideration of long term non-fatal consumptive effects for this.
Access to intoxicative indicators [or membrane/buffer partition quotients] would be more available had I access to many journal articles. Please contact me with any information you can source and I will update the intoxicative parameters and intoxication-toxic ratios. Can anyone confirm the preferability of 1-propanol? It seems that 1-propanol is metabolized to propaldehyde -> proprionic acid, which looks like pretty nasty stuff to me. If you have a look at the second link I posted above, there’s quite a few measurements of liver activity and so forth linked to a lot of these alcohols that give you more of a picture as to what’s going on. Someone mentioned 1-pentanol as significantly stronger than 1-butanol, for instance, but check out the liver-enzyme stats for pentanol vs. butanol. I know which I'd prefer - pentanol seems to have strange effects on liver O2 consumption, something else quite different is going on here.