by crow » Tue May 14, 2013 3:06 pm
Well if you had pewter water pipes and were running ethanol through them regularly yep you might be ingesting more than using pewter on your still but then again I doubt if. Antimony and the fact that it is soluble in certain alcohols is the reason is is very unwise to use PET bottles for ethanol storage. If ya want to drink the "cool aid" fine but don't go saying its safe just because inhaling might be slightly worse
Wikki
Precautions
Antimony and many of its compounds are toxic, and the effects of antimony poisoning are similar to arsenic poisoning. The toxicity of antimony is by far lower than that of arsenic; this might be caused by the significant differences of uptake, metabolism and excretion between arsenic and antimony. The uptake of antimony(III) or antimony(V) in the gastrointestinal tract is at most 20%. Antimony(V) is not quantitatively reduced to antimony(III) in the cell (in fact antimony(III) is oxidised to antimony(V) instead[77]).
Since methylation of antimony does not occur, the excretion of antimony(V) in urine is the main way of elimination.[78] Like arsenic, the most serious effect of acute antimony poisoning is cardiotoxicity and the resulted myocarditis, however it can also manifest as Adams–Stokes syndrome which arsenic doesn't. Reported cases of intoxication by antimony equivalent to 90 mg antimony potassium tartrate dissolved from enamel has been reported to show only short term effects. An intoxication with 6 g of antimony potassium tartrate was reported to result in death after 3 days.[75]
Inhalation of antimony dust is harmful and in certain cases may be fatal; in small doses, antimony causes headaches, dizziness, and depression. Larger doses such as prolonged skin contact may cause dermatitis, or damage the kidneys and the liver, causing violent and frequent vomiting, leading to death in a few days.[79]
Antimony is incompatible with strong oxidizing agents, strong acids, halogen acids, chlorine, or fluorine. It should be kept away from heat.[80]
Antimony leaches from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles into liquids.[81] While levels observed for bottled water are below drinking water guidelines,[82] fruit juice concentrates (for which no guidelines are established) produced in the UK were found to contain up to 44.7 µg/L of antimony, well above the EU limits for tap water of 5 µg/L.[83][84] The guidelines are: