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I just viewed this interesting video about radioactive ethanol from plants as opposed to non-radioactive ethanol from crude oil. In it, the professor says he's heard it's illegal in the USA to sell alcoholic drinks if they are not radioactive from carbon-14 isotopes. Is this true?

I'm not particularly worried about the implications of the radioactivity, as I indeed understand this type of radioactivity can be expected to be found in others types of food / drinks as well. Rather I am curious as to whether this is actually a way of measuring whether ethanol in drinks is not tampered with by mixing it with ethanol from petroleum.

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Without getting into a discussion of radioactivity and its implications (bananas are measurably radioactive), I would question the conclusion that the purported radioactivity is the reason for any supposed regulation. Instead, consider the possibility that regulation of the production and sale of ethanol intended for human consumption is more stringent for safety reasons (and sin taxes). – horatio Apr 28 '11 at 13:44
@horatio: I'm not particularly worried about the implications of the radioactivity, as I indeed understand this type of radioactivity can be expected to be found in others types of food / drinks as well. Rather I am curious as to whether this is actually a way of measuring whether ethanol in drinks is not tampered with by mixing it with ethanol from petroleum. – fireeyedboy Apr 28 '11 at 14:15
Would you mind adding this to your original question. It's very interesting question I believe, but at the first glance looks like yet another "omg government is trying to poison us all with radiation" type ;) – user288 Apr 28 '11 at 16:51
@Sejanus: Hmm, yeah I see your point. I formulated it a bit tendentious and/or sensational. I'll try to rephrase it a bit more neutral. – fireeyedboy Apr 28 '11 at 17:06
A variant of this I heard was an urban legend: two physicists were arguing over whether the vintage on a wine's label was true, so they carbon-dated it, and found it was several million years old - proving it had been fortified with mineral alcohol. – Oddthinking♦ Sep 13 '12 at 13:23

1 Answer

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Richard A. Muller is a Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of California at Berkeley, and Faculty Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.

His course "Physics for Future Presidents" (at UC Berkley) has been released online. In the lecture about Radioactivity he says:

The US government has decided to make it illegal to make drinking alcohol out of oil.


Muller reiterates this in his books Physics and Technology for Future Presidents and The Instant Physicist:

Radioactive Alcohol

The US government has decided that alcohol for human consumption must be made from "natural" materials, such as grains, grapes or fruit. That regulation rules out alcohol made from petroleum.

Natural alcohol gets its carbon from plants; the plants got the carbon from atmospheric carbon dioxide. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is radioactive because of the continued bombardment of cosmic rays that collide with nitrogen molecules and turn it into C-14, radiocarbon.

Petroleum was also made from atmospheric carbon, but it was buried hundreds of millions of years ago, isolated from the radioactive atmoshphere. Radiocarbon has a half-life of about 5700 years, and after 100 million years, there is nearly no atom of C-14 left.

So, a lack of radioactivity would be a giveaway that alcohol was not made from plant material.


Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau - Code of Federal Regulations, Title 27, Chapter 1:

Spirits or distilled spirits:
The substance known as ethyl alcohol, ethanol, or spirits of wine in any form (including all dilutions and mixtures thereof, from whatever source or by whatever process produced), but not fuel alcohol unless specifically stated. The term does not include spirits produced from petroleum, natural gas, or coal.

This seems to confirm that drinking alcohol must not be made from petroleum.


And according to the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Agriculture the standard method for measuring biobased content is ASTM D6866:

Carbon

[ASTM D6866] applies to products with carbon-based parts that can be combusted completely into carbon dioxide, and it uses radiocarbon, also known as carbon 14, or 14C.


From ASTM International:

[ATSM D6866 are] standard test methods for determining the biobased content of solid, liquid and gaseous samples using radiocarbon analysis

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You may solve the problem by adding a little bit of Plutonium-239 :) – belisarius Apr 28 '11 at 17:37
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So how long can you age that whisky until it becomes illegal to drink? – starblue Apr 29 '11 at 8:04
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@starblue 60,000 years. Max. – Rusty May 11 '11 at 14:32
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@belisarius: Probably not -- they presumably test for beta decay, and Pu-239 is an alpha source. – Charles May 26 '11 at 20:00
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"lack of radioactivity in alcohol indicates it was made from petroleum." ... or coal en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_from_coal – vartec Sep 12 '12 at 14:59
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