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11 more countries added to methanol poisoning red list

21 November 2025 By Sarah Neish

The UK Foreign Office has put 11 additional countries on the watch list as fatalities continue to climb from methanol poisoning caused by consuming contaminated alcohol. Is your next holiday hotspot on the list?

In October 2025, Ecuador, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, Russia and Uganda were added to a warning list created by the UK Foreign Office to help stem “a global increase in the number of reported cases” of methanol poisoning.

Just one month later a further 11 countries have been added to the list, as reports continue to flood in.

Those 11 countries are as follows: Bangladesh; India; Iran; Jordan; Libya; Malawi; Malaysia; Morocco; Nepal; Papua New Guinea; and Rwanda.

UK Foreign Office minister Hamish Falconer said all travellers should know the signs of methanol poisoning.

“If you’re drinking spirits overseas, stick to trusted places and avoid homemade alcohol or free shots,” Falconer said. “If something feels off, like a hangover that’s way worse than normal or vision problems – get medical help fast.”

What exactly is methanol?

Methanol is a toxic industrial alcohol used in products such as antifreeze, windscreen washer fluid and paint thinner. It is not meant for human consumption. However, in a growing number of countries it is being illegally mixed into alcoholic drinks to cut costs, and is almost impossible to detect due to its tasteless and odourless properties.

Contaminated alcohol is often sold in places with high alcohol taxes or a black market for alcohol, making it a cheaper substitute for ethanol. The addition of methanol also stretches a producer’s supply, making it go further and increasing profits.

Consuming even small amounts of methanol (as little as 10ml) can cause blindness or death within 12 to 48 hours after drinking. According to Travel Aware, early symptoms of methanol poisoning include vomiting, poor judgement, loss of balance and drowsiness. Later symptoms may include abdominal pain, vertigo, hyperventilation, breathlessness, blurred vision and/or blindness, coma and convulsions.

Shocking incidents

Earlier this year, a Russian nursery teacher was arrested in connection with an illicit alcohol operation that saw at least 25 people in Leningrad die after drinking vodka laced with methanol. Victims were almost entirely pensioners buying cheap, unlabelled bootleg vodka at around 90 pence a bottle.

The shocking news unfolded after 67 people were arrested in Kuwait and 10 illegal alcohol factories shut down after 23 deaths and more than 160 cases of methanol poisoning in the middle-eastern country.

In Turkey, aniseed-flavoured local spirit raki is among the most frequently contaminated drinks, leading the Governor of Istanbul to announce a new law in January 2025 that any establishment selling alcohol must have a camera system recording the premises in high definition 24/7, and the footage must be kept for at least 30 days.

However, it is not only unlabelled street-corner spirits that pose a risk.

Digital printers

As db has reported, counterfeit alcohol is on the rise with increasingly sophisticated technology and processes used by criminals to ape the design and packaging of well-known brands. At the bottom end of the black market trade, counterfeiters are buying empty bottles of premium spirits on ebay and refilling them with budget or contaminated spirits before selling them onto unknowing consumers such as the shoppers who bought half bottles of Glen’s Vodka found by Food Standards Scotland to contain isopropyl alcohol, a chemical used in industrial cleaning products.

Further up the chain, UK gangs are forking out as much as £500,000 on obtaining the identical digital printers used by professional wine and spirits producers to replicate bottles to an unprecedented level.

In May, popular Australian brand Yellow Tail was forced to confront repeated instances of counterfeit wines using its brand name in the UK. Simon Lawson, managing director of Yellow Tail’s parent company Casella Family Brands (Europe), told db the occurrences were limited to “a small number of independent retailers, where wine has been purchased through illegitimate supply chains.” There is no suggestion that fraudulent Yellow Tail bottles have led to any instances of methanol poisoning.