Dangers of children and hand sanitizer
The Daily Herald shared that six-year-old Nhaijah Russell swallowed three or four squirts of seemingly innocuous liquid hand sanitizer at school. It tasted good, she said, like strawberry, CNN reports.
It also contained enough alcohol to make her dangerously drunk. She arrived at the emergency room slurring her words and unable to walk.
Is hand sanitizer toxic?
Since 2010, poison control center hotlines across the United States have seen a nearly 400 percent increase in calls related to children younger than 12 ingesting hand sanitizer, according to new analysis by the Georgia Poison Center.
“Kids are getting into these products more frequently and unfortunately, there’s a percentage of them going to the emergency room,” said Dr. Gaylord Lopez, the center’s director.
The amount of alcohol in hand sanitizer ranges from 45 percent to 95 percent. Ingesting even small amounts — as little as two or three squirts in some cases — can cause alcohol poisoning. By comparison, wine and beer contain about 12 percent and 5 percent alcohol, Lopez said. Nhaijah’s blood-alcohol level was .179, twice what’s considered legally drunk in an adult.
Lopez said 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.
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