ATLANTA - Moonshine, once thought to be a backwoods phenomenon of yesteryear, is being blamed for serious health problems in Atlanta and beyond.
From Grady Memorial Hospital to morgues across the country, recent medical research shows that moonshine is now more of a public health threat than a law enforcement headache.
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“The days of lead toxicity and moonshine are not over,” said Dr. Brent Morgan, an Emory University School of Medicine medical toxicologist whose research on the prevalence of moonshine consumption appears in this month’s Annals of Emergency Medicine.
Nine percent of 581 Grady Memorial Hospital emergency-room patients in Dr. Morgan’s survey admitted to drinking moonshine in the past five years. Of those patients, 26 percent imbibed in the past week. Many had dangerously high levels of lead in their blood.
“I was certainly surprised to find moonshine drinkers in Atlanta,” said Dr. Morgan, who also works for the Georgia Poison Center.
Grady’s study — believed to be the first of its kind in a city hospital — was initiated three years ago after four emergency-room patients were treated for seizures — a hallmark of lead poisoning. One died, Dr. Morgan said.
“These patients made us realize that perhaps lead exposure from moonshine was being overlooked in the emergency department,” said Dr. Morgan, who recommends both urban and rural hospitals be on the lookout for moonshine-related illness.
He defined moonshine as any illicitly distilled liquor or whiskey. Patients said they got their brew from “corn houses” or illegal bars in metro Atlanta, or from stills in northern Georgia or southern Georgia. They said a pint costs between $1.25 and $3, double on Sunday.
Moonshine drinkers can have blood lead levels 10 times above what’s considered safe, which is when catastrophic brain problems begin, Dr. Morgan said.
Death is a very real possibility for moonshine drinkers, as a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention research published earlier this year revealed.
Researchers analyzed 25 of 200 lead-poisoning deaths across the country between 1979 and 1998 and linked 20 of those to moonshine consumption.
Ronald Johnson, director of Georgia’s Alcohol and Tobacco Division, says busting moonshiners is no longer a big part of his agency’s job. Since July 2002, the state agency has seized four moonshine stills; the previous fiscal year, agents found two. None was in metro Atlanta.
Manufacturing liquor without a license, a federal offense, carries a minimum sentence of five years in prison and $5,000 minimum fine. Every gallon of bootleg moonshine cheats the state out of $3.79 in tax revenue, tax officials said. From the four raids in the past year, 1,147 gallons were found, according to state records.
Mr. Johnson believes Atlanta moonshine drinkers are getting their hooch from Georgia’s rural counties and surrounding states. The last time a still was discovered in metro Atlanta was eight years ago, in south Fulton County, he said.
In northern Georgia’s Rabun County last week, a helicopter looking for marijuana patches found a still instead.
“It was a big still and it was operating,” said Cary Thomas, Rabun County sheriff’s chief investigator.
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