A pair of Tennessee teens were killed last week, and two others hospitalized, after they drank a concoction of racing fuel and Mountain Dew named “Dewshine.”
NBC News reports that Logan Stephenson, 16, died last Thursday and J.D. Byram, also 16, died Tuesday morning after being hospitalized at Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville.
Tennessee Poison Center Medical Director Donna Seger believes that the teens used methanol, which is extremely toxic, in the place of ethanol, the ingredient in booze that gets you drunk.
While the immediate effect of drinking methanol is similar to getting drunk, ingesting it eventually “causes the cellular machinery to break down,” Seger toldNBC News. “One of the unique things is it’s metabolized in the eyes, so you get blindness.”
The “Dewshine” poisoning deaths are thought to be the first in the country, according to Seger. But she believes the fact that it has a name could mean use is widespread.
Mark Megahan