A review of methanol poisoning: a crisis beyond ocular toxicology

Abstract

At first blush, methanol poisoning may be seen as an arcane problem generally associated with rapid ocular neuropathy. The emerging clinical reality is that methanol poisoning around the globe has claimed increasingly large numbers of deaths largely due to the press of poverty and the delay in suspecting and diagnosing methanol toxicity. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, false beliefs about methanol’s preventive potential vs viral infection of have arisen. In March of this year, more than 300 Iranians died and 1000 became ill after consuming methanol in the hope that it would protect them against the novel coronavirus. We review the context and magnitude of methanol toxicity, pathophysiology, principal medical issues, and human variability in metabolism. While toxicologists and clinicians may need to be especially attentive to this problem, it is becoming clear that the social and economic underpinnings of the methanol poisoning crisis must be actively and urgently explored and managed as vigorously as its toxicologic and pathophysiologic components.