Alcohol Poisoning

A Glendale woman arrested after a hit-and-run accident had a blood-alcohol level more than five times the legal definition of drunk, high enough to have knocked out or killed many people, authorities said Thursday. The woman, who weighs 105 pounds and had the equivalent of three-quarters of a pint of bourbon in her system two hours after the accident, told investigating officers she did not drink, police said. "I'm amazed she was upright and walking at all," said Deputy Dist. Atty.

The mother of a 5-year-old Everman, Tex., boy who died of alcohol poisoning was arrested. Patricia Griffin, 31, was charged with injury to a child by omission. A first-degree felony charge of injury to a child is pending against Anthony Jimerson, 21, a friend of the woman. Jimerson is accused of giving Raymond Griffin more than 10 ounces of bourbon at a party and telling him to "drink it like a man." The boy became ill after drinking bourbon at a party Feb. 23.

Thirty-two railroad workers were hospitalized after drinking industrial alcohol from a barrel tainted with phosphorus, a newspaper said Wednesday. Gudok, the newspaper of the railway union, said 32 men were hospitalized with paralysis of the hands and feet after drinking the alcohol in February. Twenty remain hospitalized, eight of them in grave condition two months after the incident, it said.

A joke is being told in Moscow about the man who makes a pass at his secretary. "Shouldn't we close the door?" she asks, and he replies, "No, the others might think we're drinking." The joke underscores the stigma attached to the consumption of alcohol since Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev started his drive against drunkenness last June 1.