In the era of COVID-19, hand sanitizer has become such an ever-present commodity that we have come to take its virtues — and its safety — for granted.
Melissa Healy| Los Angeles Times In the era of COVID-19, hand sanitizer has become such an ever-present commodity that we have come to take its virtues — and its safety — for granted. No longer. The Food and Drug Administration is warning Americans that certain hand-sanitizing products sold under a wide range of labels could be dangerous — or even fatal. Drinking them could cause blindness, liver and kidney damage or death. So could slathering it on one’s skin, since it passes quickly through the skin and into tissues beneath. Children are particularly vulnerable to potential harm from the stuff. The culprit is methanol, a poor cousin of isopropyl alcohol or ethyl alcohol, the approved active ingredients in hand sanitizing products. Starting in late July, the FDA began detecting what it called a “sharp increase” in hand sanitizers that claimed to be made with ethyl alcohol but were contaminated by methanol. Methanol smells, feels, tastes and evaporates like ethyl alcohol, the inebriate that spikes cocktails, and isopropyl alcohol, which cleans wounds and soothes muscles. While ethyl alcohol has two carbon atoms and isopropyl alcohol has three, methanol has just one. When consumed or absorbed through the skin, methanol’s first effects — including confusion, heavy breathing, slurred words and altered perception — will be familiar to anyone who has sat on a barstool for too long. But when metabolized by the human body, methanol makes formic acid and formaldehyde, both of which attack the nervous system. The optic nerve is the first line of defense to fall, and a victim of methanol poisoning will often begin to experience “snowy” vision and potentially permanent blindness.
