Here's a question for the medical folks and chemists.

So I'm seeing news blurbs about hand sanitizer sickening or even killing people due to the type of alcohol used in it. It seems that most of these came out of Mexico and contained Wood Alcohol. Whatever that is, I had no idea there were so many different kinds of alcohol.

When this Covid thing spiked here and everyone was wanting hand sanitizer, sanitizer wipes, etc, I noticed that suddenly there were a lot of new manufacturers popping up to ease the demand. It occurred to me that some of this newly manufactured and sold stuff might be sub standard, weak, ineffective, or just not good in other unknown ways to me, but I had no idea people might die from it.

I've done an internet search to try to learn and understand why people are sickened or die from this and can't figure this out.

Are people drinking this stuff? Is it absorbing in through their skin? Fumes breathed in? How in the heck are people having trouble with it?

Thanks!
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Don't drink the stuff ... just rub it on your hands until it has evaporated.
Also licking the sanitizer off your hands is a bad idea.

The problem is the type of alcohol that's in the mexican sanitizer. It's methanol, and it doesn't need to be taken orally to poison you. It is absorbed through the skin.

If the hand sanitizer you're using comes from Mexico, don't use it.

The FDA has increased it's list of hazardous hand sanitizers to 50 now, and they're all from Mexico.

quote:

Wood Alcohol

Yeah, methanol is bad stuff. Drink it and it can kill you if untreated. It is one of the causes of the high anion gap metabolic acidosis. Believe it or, one of the treatments for methanol toxicity is infusion of ethanol (the alcohol in your beer/wine).

Hand sanitizers should contain either ethanol or isopropyl alcohol (the "rubbing alcohol"), not methanol.

Yeah, the link reads it’s coming out of Mayheco.
Great, now the Chicoms will hitch their wagon to this.
https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug...-sanitizers-methanol

Non-lethal sanitizers contain isopropyl alcohol. The harmful hand sanitizers contain methanol. Here is some more information about both:
Isopropyl alcohol
Methanol

To answer your questions:
Are people drinking this stuff? No.
Is it absorbing in through their skin? Yes.
Fumes breathed in? Potentially.
How in the heck are people having trouble with it? Mainly absorption through skin and cumulative effects. More info at link above.

Thank you all. I understand better now.

So can we trust the label of ingredients to be honest and accurate? I think normally we can but in the huge demand the last few months wonder who else cut corners and screwed us?

Or counterfeit? I’ve been able to get a decent amount of Germ-X and Purell, not all at once but over a number of purchases. It’s just hard to trust things nowadays.

I could have used this to thin my deck stain for my second coat!

quote:

Are people drinking this stuff?

Turns out, yeah. I don't get it, this can't be cheaper than beer or other options. Not like a treatment center where it's the only illicit option either....

Three people died and one is permanently blind after drinking hand sanitizer in New Mexico

Yeah, serious alcoholics with no other options will commonly resort to drinking non-food products that contain alcohol, such as hand sanitizer, Lysol, mouthwash, perfume, etc.

I hear it's an especially big issue up in Alaska, where most of the remote small towns are alcohol-free and bootleg alcohol is harder to come by.

But as stated, methanol doesn't have to be swallowed to hurt/kill you. It can be absorbed through the skin.

Some additional information about methanol from 2013:

The recent surge of methanol poisonings is mainly due to the rising price of alcohol. Governments push up prices in an attempt to lower consumption, but that in turn encourages riskier methods of obtaining alcohol. Illegally, methanol is either mixed into or completely replaces the ethanol in alcoholic drinks. Although the number of methanol poisonings has risen 500% in the UK in the last year, with 250 million bottles of counterfeited alcohol taken by customs officials in the EU, the numbers are not as concerning as those related to alcohol abuse.

LINK:http://www.scientistafoundation.com/discovher-science/watch-what-you-order-this-cheaper-alcohol-ingredient-substitute-is-making-drinks-poisonous

Many of the new brands are being manufactured in distilleries, many in KY. I don't have a list of the brands, but some list the distiller on the label. Use these. It's non-toxic (not really true, as grain distilled alcohol can kill you in sufficient quantity), but it's not readily absorbed thru the skin. Also, some of the distilleries will give you the brand names if you call them.

I'm looking at a bottle of Germ-X I keep on my desk at home.

The label reads Ethyl Alcohol 63%, so can
I assume this is safe???

The safe ones are isopropyl alcohol, ethanol (ethyl alcohol) or n-propanol. The min percentage suggested is 60%. So yes.

Thanks. I never did like Chemistry class.