Sheila Madan
What's wrong with the Alcohol-based sanitizers currently in the market?
The Indian Medical Association, FDA and a number of other regulatory organisations have sounded the warning about the alcohol-based sanitisers (ABS) currently being sold in the marker. We're going to focus more on the Indian market here.
So, a number of dangerous trends in the ABS being sold in the market -
- Alcohol content is less than recommended >75% alcohol by volume (ABV) which means they are not fully effective
- High metanol content, which is highly toxic and gets directly absobed bu the skin
- Additives that are generally not safe for use or cause numerous allergies over prolonged use
- Generally a lack of quality control
- Fake product being sold in the market to capitalise on current lack of standards, high demand and oversight
- Frequent use seen to cause dry skin, eczema, rashes, irritiation and other allergic reactions
- Microbes have been found to be developing resistance to alcohol (see here, here and here, which are a pre-Covid-19 studies)
Also bear in mind that alcohol-based products cannot be used as a cleaning agent, a spray or fogging agent. If any product with an alcoholcontent meeting the >75% criteria is used as a spray, most of the alcohol will evaporat ebefore settling on the target surfaces and this will render the agent completely ineffective.
Aside from this, alcohol itself has issues. It's environmentally destructive to manufacture, there's a lot of regulation surrounding its manufacture which makes it an expensive base ingerdient.
In the News
- News from the US - The FDA has now banned more than 130 hand sanitizers that are potentially deadly
- News in India - One out of two hand sanitizers contain harmful chemicals that can be fatal to humans: Study
- Contains the following video (here) from YouTube - Gravitas: Why Hand Sanitisers Are Dangerous
There's lots more resources available on the 'net regarding this topic, we leave it to the reader to look these up if interested.
