That's interesting as drugstores do definitely sell it.
It's actual chemical name is isopropanol.

	It got me to thinking and I looked it up on chemistry
stack exchange where someone asked the question as to whether
alcohol damages plastic and rubber. An expert wrote back and
suggested that the questioner might be more clear on what kind
of plastic and what kind of alcohol but he did raise an
interesting point which I quote starting here.

   However, assuming that by alcohol you either mean ethanol, which is the
   drinking kind of alcohol, or isopropanol, which is the alcohol in many
   cleaning products, then I can give you some advice based on common
   plastic types. Both are similar enough in their solvent properties that
   we can generalize.

End of quote.

	He went on to say that most plastics could safely be
cleaned by either ethanol or isopropanol but that prolonged
exposure would craze or stiffen the plastics by dissolving their
plasticizers.

	So, while isopropanol is highly toxic to drink, pure
ethanol as in Everclear would probably do just fine cleaning
plastic parts.

	Everclear is supposed to be 100% pure ethanol so you
might ask for that also. It's probably more expensive since
technically it can be drunk, but it should have the exact same
effect on the plastic parts you want to clean as isopropanol.

	I remember over 20 years ago, buying a bottle of
isopropanol at a local drugstore. The pharmacist came out and
asked me why I needed it. When I said to clean VCR heads, he
sold it to me with no problem but explained that he needed to
make sure I understood it was poisonous because apparently some
folks aren't smart enough to realize it is not the same as
ethanol.

Martin Wb5AGZ

Gary Lee writes:
> Were do you get your isopropyl alcohol?
> 
> so far, two drug stores, and a hardware store have given me the "duh =
> what" look when I ask for this.