Talk:2022 Gujarat toxic liquor deaths

While the biographies of living persons policy does not apply directly to the subject of this article, it may contain material that relates to living persons, such as friends and family of persons no longer living, or living persons involved in the subject matter. Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons must be removed immediately. If such material is re-inserted repeatedly, or if there are other concerns related to this policy, please see this noticeboard.

Crime and Criminal Biography Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Crime and Criminal Biography, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Crime and Criminal Biography articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Crime and Criminal BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject Crime and Criminal BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Crime and Criminal BiographyCrime-related articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Death Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Death, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Death on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.DeathWikipedia:WikiProject DeathTemplate:WikiProject DeathDeath articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Disaster management Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Disaster management, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Disaster management on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Disaster managementWikipedia:WikiProject Disaster managementTemplate:WikiProject Disaster managementDisaster management articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

India: Gujarat / History Low‑importance

	India portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject India, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of India-related topics. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page.IndiaWikipedia:WikiProject IndiaTemplate:WikiProject IndiaIndia articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject Gujarat (assessed as Low-importance).
	This article is supported by the Indian history workgroup.

It is requested that a photograph be included in this article to improve its quality.

Wikipedians in Gujarat may be able to help!

The external tool WordPress Openverse may be able to locate suitable images on Flickr and other web sites.

Upload

The contentious topics procedure applies to this page. This page is related to India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, which has been designated as a contentious topic.

Editors who repeatedly or seriously fail to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process may be blocked or restricted by an administrator. Editors are advised to familiarise themselves with the contentious topics procedures before editing this page.

Daily pageviews of this article

A graph should have been displayed here but graphs are temporarily disabled. Until they are enabled again, visit the interactive graph at pageviews.wmcloud.org

Toxic liquor vs Alcohol Poisoning[edit]

It was illicitly procured methyl alcohol. The victims, did not die due to over consumption of liquor (alcohol poisoning), so the other title Alcohol Poisoning is misleading. So it should be redirected here. Venkat TL (talk) 13:49, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Venkat TL, past articles about hooch tragedies are titled alcohol posionings. So it is better titled in similar ways. The toxic liquor is misnomer, instead alcohol poisoning adequately describe the incident. Alcohol poisoning is not only applied to over consumption as you mentioned. Please revert it back to previous title. Regards,-Nizil (talk) 06:56, 28 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Nizil Shah That is not my personal theory that I am enforcing on this title. Please understand that Alcohol poisoning is a thing that is already well defined and in use for something else that is not the subject matter of this article (please click the link to understand what it means). This incident was about Methanol poisoning. These two different things should not be conflated as it causes misinformation. Please point me to the discussion where it was decided with consensus to use this wrong title for such articles? If you look at the refs in the article and google search, almost all of them are using "Toxic liquor death" or illicit liquor deaths or something like this, they are not saying alcohol poisoning that you are claiming, for obvious reasons because this is not alcohol poisoning case. I don't agree with your comment and I dont agree to rename this article. Venkat TL (talk) 11:00, 28 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Venkat TL and Nizil Shah: The CRITERIA for an article title includes both preciseness and conciseness as well as a recognizable name. Three of the cited sources use the phrase toxic liquor in their headlines and this is an accurate description of what happened in this case. While other articles may talk about alcohol poisoning, this is usually the result of improper distillation of the liquor, which is primarily an ethanol distillate contaminated with other chemicals, including methanol. In this case it seems the liquor was simply methanol. Although, both methanol and ethanol are alcohols, and the term "alcohol poisoning" can describe both situations, methanol is far more toxic than ethanol. The way the body metabolizes the different alcohols results in different metabolites and different poisoning outcomes. In the case of methanol, the body metabolizes this alcohol into formaldehyde, which is commonly used as a preservative of body parts, and then into formic acid and it salts. These metabolites are toxic. On the other hand, ethanol is metabolized into acetaldehyde, which the body can process safely over time. However, ethanol and acetaldehyde can also suppress breathing, reduce blood sugar and cause the victim to lapse into a coma. Interestingly, ethanol can be used to block the metabolism of methanol, so one treatment for methanol poisoning is to give the victim (a lot of) ethanol! Although, over-consumption of ethanol can cause death in unsupported situations due to suppression of the central nervous system. The methanol victim's body is effectively pickled directly by the formaldehyde and then destroyed by the actions of the formic acid. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 12:59, 28 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Cameron Dewe thanks for the detailed comment. Indeed I agree with your opinion. Toxic liquor is a more serious incident due to this reason, while alcohol poisoning can happen to anyone even if he drinks excessive branded alcohol (which was not the case here). I see no good reason to change the title to misleading one. Venkat TL (talk) 13:10, 28 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for comment. I proposed change because past events of methanol poisonings have the "alcohol poisoning" titles such as 2009 Gujarat alcohol poisonings. Many other similar incidents in List of alcohol poisonings in India are named similarly. So I proposed the title change to maintain consistency. Gujarat hooch tragedy is more widely used by media than "toxic liquor deaths" but Wikipedia avoids tragedy as it is POV slang. IMO, "toxic liquor deaths" is imprecise because "toxic liquor" does clarify what was toxic in liquor. Please check out List of methanol poisoning incidents. It can be named 2022 Gujarat methanol poisonings too. @Venkat TL:, "alcohol poisoning can happen to anyone even if he drinks excessive branded alcohol " is poor definition. Alcohol poisoning is very wide term. If you want precise title, methanol poisoning is a term. BTW thank you for expanding the article. Regards, Nizil (talk) 07:06, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Since no consensus discussion on such article title was shared, I assume there is none. If other articles have been wrongly named, then they need to be renamed. The past mistakes should not be continued for the sake of continuity. Each article should be reviewed case by case on cause and its title corrected, if need be. Toxic liquor follows WP:COMMONNAME as used by most reliable sources, so I have preferred this over "hooch deaths". Hooch means "illicit liquor", Hooch may or may not be toxic. Alcohol poisoning (as you must have read by now) is a different thing altogether. Thanks for the appreciation and help in improving the page. Venkat TL (talk) 12:49, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]