‘My brother was murdered by greed’: Inside Brazil’s methanol poisoning crisis
By Alessandra Freitas, CNN
(CNN) — When Marcelo Lombardi, 45, complained he was feeling sleepy on a Friday, his family didn’t think much of it.
Lombardi often put in long hours running his family’s 17-year-old real estate business in São Paulo, Brazil, working alongside two of his older sisters. A well-known attorney, he was a beloved figure in Sacomã, the southeastern neighborhood where he had lived for more than 35 years.
Fernanda Lombardi, one of his sisters, recalled their life being “perfect” until that day, September 26. “Earlier in the week, he came home with some groceries, which included a bottle of vodka,” she told CNN. “It was his favorite liquor.”
On Saturday, Marcelo woke up blind. “He told his wife he couldn’t see anything but a big bright light,” Fernanda said. Upon arriving at the hospital, no one could tell the family what was wrong with Marcelo.
“It took them about five hours to tell us that my brother had been poisoned,” Fernanda said. “By then, all of his organs were shutting down. He looked me in the eye and said, ‘I’m not leaving this place.’” Marcelo died the following day.
The family later learned from health officials that the sips of the vodka cocktail he had casually enjoyed at home days before were laced with an invisible killer – industrial methanol. The colorless liquid is now responsible for an ongoing health crisis that has triggered a nationwide panic affecting about 100 million people across six states in Brazil, according to health authorities.
Methanol is a clear, odorless, highly flammable liquid found in antifreeze, varnish and fuel. Ingesting just a few milliliters can cause blindness or death.
Federal authorities are investigating several fronts to determine how industrial methanol entered Brazil’s consumer alcohol supply. In Brazil, methanol commerce is regulated by the government, restricted to industrial uses such as biodiesel production, solvents, and laboratory applications. Its sale is legal but strictly controlled, and every transaction must be registered.
One main line of investigation is that methanol, cheaper than ethanol, may have been intentionally used by counterfeiters to cut liquor production costs. Federal police are examining whether the chemical used by clandestine factories was purchased from gas stations and later diverted to illicit alcohol production. At least one gas station in São Paulo has been identified as a common supplier in several cases. Investigators are also probing whether smuggled or diverted industrial methanol entered Brazil’s black market and if it has been used for bottle washing or sterilization by underground distilleries, contaminating drinks later sold illegally.
As a precaution, health and trade associations are urging consumers and bars to destroy or properly dispose of empty bottles to prevent counterfeiters from reusing them in the production of fake liquor.
Federal investigators have uncovered a massive black-market supply chain flooding bars, venues and homes with counterfeit liquor. So far, authorities have seized hundreds of thousands of fake labels, more than 100,000 of them just in the city of São Paulo, making it hard to estimate how far these poisonous bottles have been distributed.
Joint operations by the Civil Police and the Health Surveillance Agency have led to the closure of four clandestine factories and the arrest of 41 people, according to a statement by the government of São Paulo.
Lombardi was the third documented fatality since the crisis was announced by authorities in September, with the first cases dating to late August.
As of October 8, Brazil’s Health Ministry had logged 259 suspected cases nationwide, and five confirmed deaths – as well as confirmed poisonings in São Paulo, Paraná and Rio Grande do Sul. All of the deaths have so far occurred in São Paulo, the epicenter of the crisis. Hospitals are also reporting rapid-onset blindness, irreversible comas and organ failure within hours of ingestion.
Eduardo Capitani, toxicologist and pulmonologist at the Center for Intoxication Control at the University of Campinas, one of the country’s leading poison-control and research centers, was one of the first to alert the government that a health emergency was underway. Between early and late September, his team saw 10 suspected cases across São Paulo and neighboring cities – enough to trigger a nationwide alert. That alert prompted a joint news conference by the Justice and Health ministries, announcing a coordinated investigation into the origin of the contaminated batches.
“We’ve seen spikes before, in 2023 and 2024, among unhoused people who drank fuel-grade ethanol,” Capitani said. “This time, victims were drinking cocktails at bars and parties. These are not isolated cases.”
Capitani said Brazil’s public health system reacted quickly, but the crisis exposed deep structural weaknesses: Few hospitals have labs capable of testing for methanol or its toxic byproduct, formic acid, and fewer stocked the antidotes needed to treat patients fast.
A race against time
For Fernanda Lombardi, racing to find an antidote in pharmacies brought a feeling she will never forget. “It could’ve saved my brother’s life, but it wasn’t available anywhere. We felt powerless.”
“Ethanol is nature’s antidote to methanol,” Capitani explained. “In adulterated drinks, people may be consuming both the poison and its antidote – but in unpredictable proportions.”
Symptoms often mimic a hangover: headache, nausea, dizziness. Within 24 hours, patients may lose their vision and struggle to breathe. If the person is untreated, the methanol metabolizes into formic acid, which attacks the optic nerve and nervous system, leading to blindness, organ failure or death within 48 hours.
Treatment requires intravenous administration of ethanol or fomepizole, a specific antidote that blocks methanol’s toxic conversion. Yet ethanol is scarce in most Brazilian hospitals, and fomepizole – approved in the United States and Europe since the 1990s – reached Brazil only this week through the emergency importation of 2,500 doses.
Mariângela Batista Galvão Simão, Brazil’s secretary of health and environmental surveillance, oversaw the arrival of the first batch of fomepizole at São Paulo’s Guarulhos International Airport. “We’re working to keep our antidote reserve full,” she told CNN on Thursday from the airport, “but it’s hard to predict how much we’ll need.”
“There’s no national antidote policy,” Capitani warned. “Many hospitals didn’t have 100 percent ethanol in sufficient quantities. Until it arrives, sometimes hours later, that time can cost a patient their vision or life.”
Brazil’s Ministry of Health addressed the issue in a statement to CNN:
“The ministry has been working since February this year on developing the National Antidote Policy, which will strengthen surveillance, access to medicines, and the training of healthcare professionals.”
When pure ethanol isn’t available, doctors may temporarily administer vodka, one of the purest forms of commercial ethanol. “But now,” Capitani cautioned, “that’s become a Russian roulette, because even vodka could be contaminated.”
No more caipirinhas
Themis Mizerkowski Torres, a rheumatologist and toxicologist leading efforts at São Paulo’s Center for Intoxication Control, says the crisis is unprecedented.
“I have been with the center since 2004, and I have never seen anything like it,” she told CNN.
“The guidance is to stay away from any alcoholic beverage for now.” And in the home country of the famous caipirinha drink, made from cachaça, lime and sugar, that is no easy feat.
Torres explained that wine and beer are safer bets due to their fermentation process and how they are manufactured. But as Health Minister Alexandre Padilha stressed in a recent news conference, “there’s no such thing as completely safe drinking right now.”
In São Paulo, bars and restaurants in wealthy districts such as Itaim Bibi, Pinheiros and Berrini report steep drops in customers and cancellations of reservations. Some have stopped selling vodka, whiskey and cachaça entirely.
From São Paulo to Pernambuco, fear now overshadows Brazil’s vibrant bar culture – a sobering reminder of how one contaminated bottle can devastate families and test the country’s ability to contain a crisis.
‘Murdered by greed’
Fernanda Lombardi says her brother’s death destroyed their family and community.
“He was healthy, hard-working, happy,” she said. “He didn’t even go out – he drank a little vodka at home. That’s what we can’t understand.”
The family turned the bottle over to police, but toxicology results have yet to be released.
“My brother was murdered by greed,” she said. “Someone thought about money and not a human life. We want justice, so no other family has to go through this.”
At his funeral, hundreds of mourners came to pay respects.
“Everyone had a story about how he helped them, and I had no idea,” Fernanda Lombardi said. “He did good quietly.”
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