“You got the keychain?” asked the woman at the next table over at Panera, who was feeding a turkey sandwich to her toddler. She holds up a blue plastic bauble and lets it dangle in the air. “I’m never without mine. I use it before I do anything.”
A flashlight? Mini rosary beads? I took a good look at what she had there. Hand sanitizer?
The friend sat down heavily. “Me too. I’m so glad it comes in a keychain now, so I can use it all day.” She opened up her small bottle of hand sanitizer and rubbed a silver dollar sized dollop onto her hands. “You want some?” she asked her pal, who nodded enthusiastically, and then held out her toddler’s hands to get a large squirt too. “Like it, honey? It smells like peaches!”
What’s this thing where we don’t just wash up, we sanitize ourselves? Sanitize? You sanitize hotel toilet sets, not people. You want clean hands? Wash them! With soap and water. If you’re going to perform surgery, okay, you got me, sanitize away. Otherwise, just plain soap and water does the job every bit as well as it needs to be done.
Plus, there are some creepy substances in that little bottle people seem to consider insta-clean. First of all, most hand sanitizers on the market are about 60 percent alcohol. There have been numerous cases of kids being admitted to hospitals with alcohol poisoning from drinking hand sanitizer.
And why wouldn’t they? It smells like sweet peaches! And it comes in a container without a child-proof cap, too, and it’s left around where they can get to it.
Some hand sanitizers don’t have alcohol. Good, right? Unfortunately, many of those sanitizers contain triclosan instead. Say, isn’t triclosan a notorious substance suspected to be one of the chemical villains behind the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria? Why yes! Yes, it is!
If you check the label on a bottle of hand sanitizer, you may also find other creepy chemicals such as benzalkonium chloride. Benzalkonium chloride works by dissolving the membranes inside the cells of germs. Sounds good.
But um, the same types of cells that are in the germs are in the human body. Anyone out there dumb enough to believe that the hand sanitizers somehow magically only work on the germs and not on our cells, mammal cells? When the chemical is known to be “highly toxic to fish” and “moderately toxic to birds?” By trying to hyper-clean our environment, are we unwittingly putting a toxic chemical into it?
There are also those artificial fragrances to consider. Many of them contain phthalates, which are known endocrine disrupters with a wide and terrifying range of health effects.
But the phthalates are in such small amounts, you say. Who could be hurt by such small amounts that would be in this tiny little bottle? Dunno. But it’s probably not a great idea to expose your body to them over and over for years, is it? Particularly little vulnerable bodies like our kids have?
It’s not always possible to wash your hands with soap and water, but frankly, all the places you really need to wash your hands, you can. In bathrooms, at restaurants, at school, at home, there’s a sink with water and soap. Use it.
Because say what you will about soap and water, but it’s not associated with a decreased immune system, and the destruction of beneficial bacteria that helps our body fight pathogens.