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So, there was an article saying if you vaporize alcohol and Inhale, that you can consume it and it will go into your bloodstream and make you drunk.

I’m wondering if when you cook with alcohol and it burns off/evaporates if you are consuming any alcohol since it’s in the air and if you are also consuming any calories from it? Less of you have a cover to the pot of the food you are making ??? How long do the molecules from the alcohol stay in the air surrounding you?

Mae
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    I heard from a guy who worked in a factory in a 3rd world country that they had a tank of alcohol that they used for cooling down machinery and guys would also take swigs by breaks. One day a guy went missing. When they got to the bottom of the tank they found his body. Apparently when he opened the tank up, he took a deep breath in and the sudden shock made him pass out, fall in, and drown. – mroll Feb 24 '20 at 20:40

2 Answers2

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Can you get drunk off alcohol vapor? Absolutely. Apparently in the early 2000s, a alcohol vapor device was invented and subsequently banned in some American states, see Wikipedia here.

However, if you cook with alcohol, e.g. deglazing a pan with some wine, sherry, etc., the amounts are not that high, and I doubt you stand above the pan and completely inhale every part of the alcohol vapor. Still, if you want to avoid getting tipsy, just let the alcohol evaporate, maybe set your range hood (correct word?) to a higher setting so it draws away the vapor quickly.

John Doe
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  1. yes you are consuming alcohol, technically speaking. Yes, it has calories, scientifically speaking. This is misleading however, because not all calories are the same. Alcohol has calories because it burns (it's actually used as a fuel) and produces heat, which a calorimeter detects. However these calories "don't count" in the sense that sugar or fat calories do, because your body cannot store them, thus they don't make you gain weight; they are converted to other chemicals and excreted as waste. To wit: vodka itself can't make you fat, but carbs in beer and wine can.

  2. a pot cover doesn't change the total amount evaporated, though it may direct the vapor away from your face and thus lower your overall uptake, or reduce the rate at which alcohol escapes from the pan. A reduce seep rate will make the air concentration lower, which makes uptake slower, which gives your liver longer to break it down in real time.

  3. As long as the air around you stays around you, so too will the ethyl vapor. Or in other words, as long as you can smell it there is alcohol in the air.

Fun with Numbers:

Keep in mind that your body constantly breaks down ethyl in your metabolism. The rate varies, but is generally about a half-ounce per hour, or one ml per 4 minutes. If you figure a 2oz splash of sherry has 10ml of ethyl and takes 5 mins to completely reduce, that's an evaporation rate of 2ml/min. Even if you breathed in all the vapors of the pot with each breath, you're only inhaling 25% of the time; 0.5ml/min, or about twice the rate you can break it down.

That means it will take a long time to get enough ethyl to feel in that route of administration, basically half as long as it takes you to sober up. That's certainly longer than you're standing over the pot or the splash takes to evaporate. There's much more effective ways of consuming alcohol...

dandavis
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