Student left with vision problems by fake vodka

A university student from Sheffield has warned of the dangers of drinking counterfeit alcohol after a bottle of cut-price vodka left her with damaged eyesight.

Lauren Platts, 21, bought a cheap bottle of what she thought was vodka, for £5.99.

But after consuming about a third of a bottle mixed with lemonade she spent the next two days unable to get out of bed and became violently ill, and is still having problems with her sight two months later.

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She says the man in the off-licence jokingly said ‘It will blind you’. Miss Platts, from Chesterfield, said she laughed at the time but now she thinks he was nearly proved correct.

“I had the worst migraine ever, I was extremely sick, with blurred vision. On the second day I wondered whether I’d ever get better,” she told the BBC.

“I’ve been sent home from work because of the vision problems. It’s really scary. I think I might have it for good, but I’m just grateful to be alive or not completely blind,” she said.

She still regularly loses part of her vision. It is affecting her work and her ability to drive; even crossing the road can be difficult.

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The trade in fake vodka is a rapidly growing illegal industry run by criminal gang. Police and Trading Standards say the bootleg spirits are becoming more sophisticated and students seeking cheap vodka are especially vulnerable.

The bootleggers are using industrial alcohol which is unfit for human consumption. Bleach is added to methylated spirit to make the alcohol clear, so it resembles real vodka.

Ingredients like methanol, which can blind, isopropanol and other harmful products, normally used in cleaning fluids, antifreeze and paint stripper, have all been detected in batches of the illegal alcohol.