Methyl acetate has low toxicity and can cause harm to the human body. The main injuries include irritating the respiratory tract, causing headaches, palpitations, and may also cause visual damage. The main damage pathways of methyl acetate are inhalation, ingestion, and transdermal absorption, which may cause eye burning, tearing, difficulty breathing, headache, heart palpitations, central nervous system depression, etc. In addition, it may also damage the liver. When methyl acetate comes into direct contact with the body, clean the infected area with clean water and soapy water to avoid serious damage to the skin. If your eyes are infected, clean them immediately with water or saline. If poisoning occurs, the patient needs to seek medical treatment promptly.

Methyl acetate is hydrolyzed in the body to produce methanol, which is poisonous to humans, causing discomfort such as vision loss, blurred vision, and optic atrophy. After methanol enters the human body, it first removes a hydrogen through alcohol dehydrogenase and becomes formaldehyde. Formaldehyde then removes another hydrogen through aldehyde dehydrogenase and becomes formic acid, and is finally metabolized into carbon dioxide and water. To put it simply, methanol will turn into formic acid through the action of these two enzymes in the human body. The accumulation of formic acid will cause acidosis and nerve damage in the human body, causing a series of symptoms including visual impairment.

How to judge whether it is methanol poisoning?

In addition to the more typical visual impairment and blindness, methanol poisoning may also cause the following symptoms depending on the severity of the symptoms.

Mild poisoning: The patient may be in a drunken state with symptoms such as headache, dizziness, fatigue, excitement, insomnia, unsteady gait, and ataxia.

Moderate poisoning: Patients suffer from nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, hepatitis and pancreatitis, and symptoms such as hallucinations, visual hallucinations, blurred vision, and cold limbs.

Severe poisoning: Patients may have pale complexion, cyanosis, accelerated breathing and pulse, cold sweats, confusion, delirium, coma, shock, and finally death due to respiratory and circulatory failure.

Prominent symptoms: Damage to the patient's optic nerve, such as diplopia, photophobia, eyeball pain, pupil dilation, slow or missing light response, retinitis, retinal edema, congestion or hemorrhage, retrobulbar optic neuritis. Severe poisoning may cause blindness due to optic nerve atrophy. Psychiatric symptoms can include paranoia, fear, mania, hallucinations, apathy, depression, etc.