With the increasing awareness of personal hygiene, hand sanitizers have been in increasing demand in the markets throughout the world. Several countries have ensured to meet the rapidly increasing demand by hasty approvals for its production and distribution, thus having leakages in the usual safety standards and approvals required for the pharmaceutical manufacturing of the sanitizers. As a result of which the markets are flooded with the hand sanitizers, risking the health and the life of the consumers.
Recently several instances were recorded when the toxic hand sanitizers harmed the lives of the users, in which few instances resulted into the death of the victims. A recent report of the American market issued by the FDA stated that, there are sanitizers in the market which are potentially very dangerous, as they contain a high level of methanol.
According to the FDA, after testing several sanitizer producing companies, who claimed to contain ethanol or ethyl alcohol, they found that a proportion of the samples actually contained the Methanol or wood alcohol. These sanitizers were available in the leading stores and the unaware consumers were using them in large quantities. These sanitizers not only lead to blindness but can also cause the death of the person if ingested.
Methanol being a toxic substance should not be used as an integrant while preparing hand sanitizers as its exposure can result in vomiting, headache, nausea, blurred vision, seizures, coma, permanent blindness, nervous disorder or death. Any individual exposed to it should immediately seek the medical help in order to reverse the toxic effects of the Methanol. Its exposure causes a life threatening situation in case it is inhaled by the infants or the drug addicts causing methanol poisoning within the body.
Since the demand for the product is increasing, the manufacturers are trying to produce the quantity in order to meet the growing demand. This has led to compromise with the quality and hence, consumers unaware of it are using these products.
Being a consumer you should be aware of the hand sanitizers that may be dangerous for your health. You might use it to keep yourself safe from the spread of the deadly virus, but it might be harmful to you. So, while purchasing the sanitizer you must take care of a few things and should only use the safe product to keep yourself safe.
Here are two tests to help you decide the quality of the hand sanitizers that you must look out while buying them in the market.
- Draw a mark with a pen on the tissue paper and pour some drops on it. If the ink fades or spills away then the hand sanitizer is fake.
- Pour few drops of hand sanitizer on the surface, now blow warm air to it like that of hair drier. If the drops dry up within 5 seconds, then your hand sanitizer is good to use.
Above all this you must check the alcohol content of the sanitizers, as the minimum mandatory quantity of it is around 60%, anything less than this could be doubtful to serve the purpose. Along with this you also need to make habit to wash your hands properly with soap and water for the duration of minimum 20 secs to kill the germs as it is far better to any new market brought hand sanitizers.