From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com(Steven B. Harris)
Newsgroups: misc.health.alternative
Subject: Re: Drinking Propylene Glycol to Your Good Health
Date: 28 Oct 1998 08:37:28 GMT

In <715r44$jac$1@strato.ultra.net> wright@nospam.clam (David Wright)
writes:
>
>In article <36353A49.A5323C42@pacbell.net>,
>trcharly  <trcharly@pacbell.net> wrote:
>>ARE YOU NUTZ? Do a medline search on glycol ethers. I wouldn't go
>>near anything with propylene glycols in it.
>
>There are a LOT of different gycol ethers, with widely varying
>properties.  The ethylene glycol ethers are the nasty ones.


   Actually, they're almost all pretty horrible, or at least the small
molecular weight ones are (eg, 2-methoxyethanol).  This, due to the
fact that the secondary and primary alcohols tend to get oxidized up to
alpha alkoxy carboxylic acids, and these are DNA damaging =
mutagenic/genotoxic.  Many of them, under names like "methyl
cellosolve" or "ethyl cellosolve" have been used as solvents in the
past without full understanding of how toxic they really are, both in
short and long term.  OSHA has recently clamped down, and the situation
is now better.

   None of this, of course, has anything to do with propylene glycol,
which isn't a glycol ether.  It's just a glycol.  Ditto for ethylene
glycol, which is toxic, but only because of the oxalate nephropathy.
It's not particularly genotoxic, and if it were, they wouldn't let it
be used in antifreeze.  Propylene glycol lacks even the renal problem,
and is generally regarded as safe.

                                         Steve Harris, M.D.