DYNOMIGHT ABOUT RSS SUBSTACK

What happens if you drink acetone?

What happens if you drink acetone?

Updated Aug 2022

Question: Should you drink acetone?

Answer: No.

But, out of interest, what if you did? This question is asked repeatedly on the web, with with many answers smugly stating that even tiny amounts of acetone will instantly kill you, you idiot. But they provide no evidence.

Fact #1: Acetone bottles are scary looking

Certainly, this doesn’t look like something you’d want to put in your body:

acetone barrels

Fact #2: Your body naturally produces and disposes of acetone.

Acetone occurs naturally in plants. Your liver produces acetone when metabolizing fat. If you fast, have diabetes, or exercise very hard, you produce more acetone. You also produce more if you follow a ketogenic diet. (Acetone is a “ketone”!) Small amounts of acetone are naturally present in your blood and urine, the latter being how you get rid of it.

Fact #3: Diabetes can cause your breath to smell like acetone.

Insulin is needed to break down glucose and provide energy to cells. Diabetics have trouble either producing or using insulin. Thus, their bodies may burn fat instead. Burning lots of fat produces lots of acetone, enough to impact the breath. (This is a serious problem if it occurs.)

Fact #4: Drinking acetone will make you not think so good no more.

Fisher Scientific’s MSDS gives the following effects for acetone:

Ingestion: May cause gastrointestinal irritation with nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. May cause systemic toxicity with acidosis. May cause central nervous system depression, characterized by excitement, followed by headache, dizziness, drowsiness, and nausea. Advanced stages may cause collapse, unconsciousness, coma and possible death due to respiratory failure.

Sounds serious! Except, oh wait, I made a “mistake”. That was the list of effects for ethanol. Here are the effects for acetone:

Ingestion: May cause irritation of the digestive tract. May cause central nervous system depression, characterized by excitement, followed by headache, dizziness, drowsiness, and nausea. Advanced stages may cause collapse, unconsciousness, coma and possible death due to respiratory failure. Aspiration of material into the lungs may cause chemical pneumonitis, which may be fatal.

Remind you of anything?

Fact #5: Acetone is probably marginally more toxic than ethanol.

In animals, the Oral LD50 for acetone ranges from 3 g/kg in mice to 5.8 g/kg in rats. For ethanol it is around 7.3 g/kg for both mice and rats.

This suggests you’d need to drink something like an entire bottle of nail-polish remover to be at risk of dying: If the mice numbers translate to humans, someone who weighs 80kg (180lb) would need to drink 240g of acetone to have a 50% chance of death. Standard nail-polish remover bottles contain around 200ml and are 98% acetone.

The same person would need to consume around 584 ml of grain alcohol to have the same risk.

But remember that the LD50 is the amount where there’s a 50% risk of death. Lower amounts can still present a non-zero risk. For most substances, the LD10 (10% chance of death) is within a small factor of the LD50, but it doesn’t seem to have been determined for acetone.

Fact #6: Acetone is Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) by the FDA.

For better or worse, food manufacturers can put acetone in food and sell it to you without testing for safety. This seems to be common with spice oleoresins (concentrated forms of spices).

Fact #7: Some insane internet people drank acetone and didn’t die.

In a thread on bluelight, Psychedelic Jay reports:

So far 1 ml of pure acetone in 10 ml of water. Effects: Slight sedation, easy going sense of euphoria, very similar but smoother than ethanol intoxication. Heart rate increased by 6-10 beats a minute… Blood pressure exactly the same…

While pino says:

So one night, I took 20ml strongly diluted, a dose which shouldn’t kill you. The taste was masked by mixing it with fruit juice, which made it actually pleasantly to sip. Slightly fruity. In about half an hour, a pleasant warm sedation spread over my body. It felt like a clean alcohol intoxication. Nothing to strong, but very relaxing. I guess it took me for an hour of 10. There is no hangover.

Both of these are consistent with the idea that acetone has effects that are similar to alcohol. All the other comments in that thread, of course, say “what, are you crazy?”.

Fact #8: You shouldn’t drink acetone.

There’s no reason to do so. It’s (presumably) disgusting. It’s very flammable. The effects haven’t been studied nearly as much as alcohol’s. And I could be wrong about all of this.

But suppose acetone had exactly the same effects as ethanol. Yes, that would mean that “acetone is as safe as alcohol”. But it would also mean that “alcohol is as dangerous as acetone”. That’s probably the wiser interpretation.

new dynomight every thursday
except when not

(or try substack or rss)
Is there a homeless crisis?

A look at the data.

A few years ago, I took a look at the data on homelessness in the United States. We now have new data (and a new reality) so let’s revisit things, this time in superior list format. 1. After holding steady...
Conspiracy theory: Electric cars make more air pollution than gas cars

tires + battery + heavy

Claim: Per kilometer driven down the road, electric cars create more particulate air pollution than gas cars. That’s ignoring all other emissions and anything that happens at a power plant or during manufacturing.

WHO aspartame brouhaha

the territory under dispute

On July 14, two different arms of the WHO released their findings on aspartame. One designated it “possibly carcinogenic to humans”, while the other concluded that “dietary exposure to aspartame does not pose a health concern”. The FDA took the...
Numbers without which it's impossible to talk about weight loss

You lose glycogen before fat. Glycogen is heavy.

We lose weight when we burn more calories than we eat. But how much weight do you lose for a given caloric deficit? This isn’t complicated. But it’s not trivial either, because the body has two forms of energy reserves:...
A modest proposal: For preventing the heat in bathwater in Britain

FROM BEING A WASTE TO THE BATHER AND COUNTRY, AND FOR MAKING IT BENEFICIAL TO THE PUBLICK

Europe is in an energy crisis. There are lots of things that might be done, but most are slow or expensive or painful or don't accomplish much. But here's a little daydream: 1. We use lots of energy to heat...
How much does a CT scan affect life expectancy?

If you get a CT scan (or an X-ray or a nuclear medicine scan) is it worth worrying about the radiation?

You're probably aware that if you get a CT scan, that exposes you to a fair of radiation. But I've always wondered—how much should I care about that? So here's an attempt at a rough estimate. As always, I think...
Blocked persons and letters of marque

What are letters of marque and reprisal, and who is on the US's list of Block Persons?

Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the US Constitution reads: "The Congress shall have Power to declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;" What are these Letters of Marque...
Aspartame: Once more unto the breach

Like it or not, there's a clear scientific consensus

Look, I get it. Diet Coke tastes sweet because it has aspartame in it. Aspartame is a weird synthetic molecule that’s 200 times sweeter than sucrose. Half of the world’s aspartame is made by Ajinomoto of Tokyo—the same company that...
Diet Coke probably isn't a cognitive performance enhancer

Investigating the (aspartame → phenylalanine → dopamine) theory

"Very ambitious and successful and competitive and rich person loves Diet Coke" has been in the news recently, and friend of the blog Aaron Bergman proposes a theory as to why. Spelled out in more detail, it goes like this:...
Why nuclear weapons aren't getting bigger

Nations could build nuclear warheads much more powerful than they have now. But they have no interest in doing so. Why is that?

The Little Boy bomb detonated over Hiroshima in 1945 was a fission weapon where a critical mass of uranium-235 created a chain reaction of atoms splitting into lighter atoms, releasing energy and neutrons. While such weapons are very destructive, they...
So you want to invent a nuclear weapon

From atoms to big boom.

1. You’re in the mood for destruction. One day, you hear about this phenomenon of “radiation” where matter gives off energy. You think—perhaps you can harness this property of nature to make a big boom. Apparently matter is made of...
A breakdown of the data on the homeless crisis across the U.S.

Many people see a homelessness crisis, but what does the data say? We examine different locations, rates of change, types of homelessness, and mental health and substance abuse issues.

Is the US in the midst of a homelessness crisis? Many people think so, but that's largely based on based on anecdotes. What does the data say? At a glance, this doesn't look very crisisy. Since 2015, things have gone...
The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it

Since around 2009, methamphetamines have been made with phenylacetone (P2P). Is there a chemical different causing schizophrenia?

{% comment %} Titles: The main thing about P2P meth is that there’s more of it Skepticism about P2P meth What’s the difference with P2P meth? Let’s not get distracted: The main thing about P2P meth is that there’s a...
Two conspiracy theories about cola

Does cola contain a drug to prevent you from throwing up from the sugar? And is Mexican Coke somehow better than American Coke?

Our first conspiracy theory has all the best qualities: 1. It sounds insane. 2. At first, the facts seem to support it. 3. Later, the facts lead to disquieting reevaluations of the medical system. So here's the conspiracy: "Cola has...
The big alcohol study that didn't happen: My primal scream of rage

Why did a huge alcohol RCT get cancelled? A strange story of science, academia, bureaucratic maneuvering, ambition, politics, capitalism, the deep state, secret emails, and slippery ethical slopes.

What does drinking do to your health? We can say two things with confidence: 1. Drinking is associated with lots of health problems. 2. Heavy drinking is bad for you. Here's a graph of some associations. Someone who averages 10...
A review of early split-brain experiments

What happens if you cut your brain in half?

What happens if you cut your cortex in half? When this was first tried on animals, the answer seemed to be not much. But starting in the late 1950s, a series of experiments found that very weird things happen under...
Alcohol, health, and the ruthless logic of the Asian flush

Why did the Asian flush evolve? What does this say about alcoholism? What does this have to do with Odysseus?

Say you’re an evil scientist. One day at work you discover a protein that crosses the blood-brain barrier and causes crippling migraine headaches if someone’s attention drifts while driving. Despite being evil, you’re a loving parent with a kid learning...
Napoleon's failure in Russia as an analogy for T-cell based viral immunity

How the immune system's memory cells are like the Russian strategy for resisting Napoleon's invasion.

In June of 1812 Napoleon assembled the largest European army in history and invaded Russia. After months of bloody fighting, the French finally arrived in Moscow in September, surprised to find the city mostly abandoned. That night, remaining Russians set...