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Manisbutaworm t1_it4fcen wrote

Reply to comment by regular_modern_girl in Why does alcohol kill bacteria, but not the cells that our bodies are composed of? by Chairman_Mittens

“But I guarantee you, if you somehow exposed every cell in your body at once to a high concentration of 99% ethanol, you would not survive it either. “

Actually you need less than a percent to kill most people if you expose all cells.

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regular_modern_girl t1_it4sdxv wrote

I mostly went with a really huge number to emphasize how even the probably 20-30% ethanol found in mouthwash (that’s a guesstimate, it may actually more or less than that, but I know 40% is around where common hard liquor tends to hover, and I kind of doubt most mouthwash has that much ethanol in it) effects bacterial cells really drastically due to their size, even the amount of alcohol in common wine or even beer is enough to kill a good share of microbes that aren’t specially adapted to be tolerant of alcohol, hence why beer and wine (and equivalents) were the drinks of choice for most people throughout a good portion of history (basically until people started to really figure out the whole water purification thing in the last couple centuries); it was better to be vaguely drunk/hungover all the time than get cholera or dysentery.

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Racer13l t1_it7j95s wrote

Right. And yeast, it's a fungus I know, but can't ferment alcohol past like 18 proof because it gets killed. That's why you have to distill liquor but you can just ferment wine and beer

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