Hand Sanitizer and Dangerous Blood Alcohol Levels
Recent reports are indicating that more and more children are unknowingly ingesting hand sanitizer. Hand sanitizer, a formula used to clean hands without soap or water, is commonly used in schools, households, and everywhere else these days. Children are especially prone to ingesting the chemicals because they do not recognize the dangers of doing so. In fact, many teachers and parents don’t realize how dangerous hand sanitizer is either.
CNN.com reported about a 6 year old student who swallowed “three or four squirts of seemingly innocuous liquid hand sanitizer at school. It tasted good, she said, like strawberry.” CNN indicated the child ended up drunk (with a blood-alcohol level of .179- twice what’s considered to be legally drunk as an adult) in the emergency room, slurring her words and unable to walk due to the high amount of alcohol she had swallowed.
Many poison control centers across the nation are seeing a rise (a 400% increase) in the misuse of hand sanitizer, resulting in ER visits. The amount of alcohol in hand sanitizer can be as little as 45% or as much as 95%. Ingesting even small amounts — as little as two or three squirts in some cases — can cause alcohol poisoning – especially in small children. To illustrate how much alcohol that is, alcohol typically consumed by adults, like wine and beer, contains about 12% and 5% alcohol respectively.
Alcohol poisoning can cause confusion, vomiting and drowsiness. In severe cases, a child can stop breathing. At a poison control center in Georgia, CNN reports that
3,266 hand sanitizer cases related to young children were reported to poison control centers in 2010. In 2014, the number increased to 16,117 cases.
Young children don’t recognize that swallowing hand sanitizer is dangerous often because of the attractive kid friendly packaging. Hand sanitizer may appear tasty to kids, especially the ones that come in strawberry, orange, and grape or other kid friendly scents. Teens, on the other hand, may ingest hand sanitizer on a dare, knowing it will cause drunkenness. However, teens will probably not realize just how high their blood-alcohol levels will actually become. Awareness about hand sanitizer and the dangers of ingesting it is key to keeping kids of all ages safe.
Source: CNN.com