London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

A study, conducted by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine has shown that many Russians drink so-called 'surrogate' alcohols, such as 'samogon' (moonshine), medicinal compounds, and other spirits such as aftershave products. New analyses indicate that these products have either very high concentrations of alcohol, or toxic contaminants.

Heavy alcohol consumption contributes to numerous problems in Russia, not the least of which is a very high death rate. The study found that a surprisingly high percentage of 25- to 54-year-old Russian men living in the industrial city of Izhevsk were using 'surrogate' alcohols, otherwise known as products containing alcohol that are not legally sold for consumption. Researchers have now analyzed the contents of these surrogate alcohol products, finding either high alcohol content or toxic contaminants. Results are published in the October issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

'During the past decade we have been investigating reasons for the very high death rate among Russians," said Martin McKee, Professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. 'We have been looking in detail at men in Izhevsk, a city in central Russia. While we confirmed what we already knew, that a lot of vodka is drunk in Russia, we also found that … a surprisingly large number of people - seven percent - were drinking substances containing alcohol but not meant to be drunk. We then decided to find out what was in these substances."

Mikhail Gorbachev introduced an anti-alcohol campaign in the mid-Eighties and within two years, life expectancy increased by 3.2 years for men, and 1.4 years for women. But in the post-Soviet early Nineties economic reforms led to a liberalization of alcohol prices and hard liquor became available 24 hours a day. Between 1992 and 1994 life expectancy for men decreased by 4.7 years for men and 3.4 ears for women, largely because of alcohol-related accidents and violence and cardiovascular deaths.

Another member of the LSHTM team, Professor David Leon, believes that the similar substances are being consumed in many other parts of the world. 'These are products that are often consumed by people living on the margins of society, who are difficult to conduct research upon', he said. 'Until the early 1970s consumption of surrogates alcohols was also major problem in Finland. The fact that it is no longer so provides cause for optimism - that there are ways forward to tackle this problem.'

Professors McKee and Leon and their colleagues recently met representatives from President Putin's government to discuss the seriousness of the problem, following which President Putin highlighted this issue in his 2005 state-of the-nation-address.

Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research (ACER) is the official journal of the Research Society on Alcoholism and the International Society for Biomedical Research on Alcoholism. Co-authors of the ACER paper, "The Composition of Surrogate Alcohols Consumed in Russia," were: Sándor Szûcs, Attila. Sárváry and Roza Ádany of the School of Public Health in Debrecen, Hungary; Nikolay Kiryanov of the Izhevsk Medical Academy, Russia; Ludmila Saburova of the Social Technologies Institute in Izhevsk, Russia; Susannah Tomkins and David A. Leon of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; and Evgeny Andreev of the Research Institute of Statistics in Goskomstat/Moscow, Russia. The study was funded by the Wellcome Trust.