Mounting poisonings, blindness, deaths as toxic hand sanitizers flood market

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Mounting poisonings, blindness, deaths as toxic hand sanitizers flood market​

Beth Mole
  • 07/28/2020 6:32 pm
  • Categories:Science
The Food and Drug Administration is renewing warnings this week of dangerous hand sanitizers as it continues to find products that contain toxic methanol—a poisonous alcohol that can cause systemic effects, blindness, and death.

The agency’s growing “do-not-use list” of dangerous sanitizers now includes 87 products (See the full list here). And with the mounting tally, the FDA also says there are rising reports from state health departments and poison control centers of injuries and deaths.

“We remain extremely concerned about the potential serious risks of alcohol-based hand sanitizers containing methanol,” said FDA Commissioner Stephen M. Hahn in a statement . . .

. . . The agency reported that its ongoing testing has found sanitizers containing methanol at levels ranging from 1 percent to 80 percent. No amount of methanol is acceptable, the agency notes. The alcohol, which is metabolized to formaldehyde then to formic acid in the body, can cause systemic toxic effects if ingested, inhaled, or absorbed through the skin. Ingesting just two tablespoons can be fatal to small children, who may be tempted to drink sanitizers within reach. Smaller amounts can lead to permanent blindness. . . .

. . . States continue to report increasing numbers of harms from the products, which can cause nausea, vomiting, headache, blurred vision, permanent blindness, seizures, coma, permanent damage to the nervous system, cardiac effects, and death. In one case, investigators linked a death to Blumen Hand Sanitizer, distributed by 4e North America and manufactured by 4E Global in Mexico. The company has recently expanded a recall of its products, the FDA notes.

Alerts over toxic hand sanitizer first appeared in late June, when the FDA identified nine offending products all from one manufacturer in Mexico. In an update earlier this month, the FDA said it had identified five additional brands of methanol-containing sanitizers.

The FDA has sent companies warning letters, pushed for recalls, and placed products on import alerts. For consumers, the agency recommends avoiding all products from any of the manufacturers on the list. . . .
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https://arstechnica.com/science/202...-as-toxic-hand-sanitizers-flood-market/?amp=1
 
I originally guessed we’d be seeing articles saying hand sanitizers cause cancer after the mad rush to buy them. Didn’t expect that they could cause blindness.
 
Lets use science. The reason these are toxic is because they are full of methanol instead of ethanol. In the production of alcohol, wrong processes led to methanol instead of ethanol. Methanol is highly toxic. This is why testing and chemical analysis at crucial steps in manufacture is paramont.
It is also the reason home made and suspect brews should not be consumed, especially in Bali
 
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Sad to see. I figure at some point in the future we’ll also see something along the lines of hand sanitizer causes cancer.
 
Roselle, this has nothing to do with cancer.
Why are you raising that?
 
Hand sanitizers usually contain isopropyl alcohol.

We’ve used that forever as rubbing alcohol.

The problem is hand sanitizer made with methanol.
 
From the article:

Triclosan, for example, a chemical widely used in cleaning products, has been shown to decrease levels of two thyroid hormones involved in growth and metabolism.

Isopropyl alcohol isn’t Tricolsan.

The problem is that methanol ended up in the hand sanitizer.

Isopropyl alcohol is fine to use.

So is ethanol.
 
Side story. I’m a Medical Technologist. About once a year, we’d have an alcoholic desperate for drink that would consume methanol in order to satisfy their craving. Sterno and windex were the usual suspects. The emergency treatment is to give IV alcohol (ethanol) . It works by what’s called competitive binding. Both methanol and ethanol bind to the same carriers in the blood and by giving ethanol by IV, less methanol can bind to the limited sites.

It usually works quite well, staving off the worst of the side effects, though temporary blindness still occurs. It also makes for one drunk patient…which is why some will play the game! It was a nightmare for us chemists, though as qwe constantly had to perform blood levels to monitor them.

Yes, methanol is deadly! IMHO no one should apply any hand sanitizer on small children as they stick their hands in their mouth all the time! Try to stick with soap and water as much as possible!
 
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That may be so but it is not causing this current issue, the intentional or unintentional addition of methanol is, along with shoddy manufacture and importation practices.
 
Why public health officials don’t emphasize soap (or laundry detergent or dish detergent) literally causes the virus (and those similar to it) to collapse in 20 seconds is a mystery to me.

 
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Kind of reminds me of some of the stories about “bathtub gin” during Prohibition, where toxic wood alcohol was drank in large quantities from bathtubs, causing people to go blind, and suffer other poisoning effects.

There was even a song about that some years ago, about the owner of a speakeasy called “Big Mabel Murphy’s”.

And now we’re finding a form of that in hand sanitizers. From what I’ve read of the article, most of those are being manufactured overseas and imported into the U.S.?

Another good reason to buy American.
 
The presence of methanol maybe intentional cost-cutting or by accident through contamination.
Incidence of methanol contamination of traditionally fermented beverages is increasing globally resulting in the death of several persons. The source of methanol contamination has not been clearly established in most countries. While there were speculations that unscrupulous vendors might have deliberately spiked the beverages with methanol, it is more likely that the methanol might have been produced by contaminating microbes during traditional ethanol fermentation, which is often inoculated spontaneously by mixed microbes, with a potential to produce mixed alcohols.
Methanol contamination in traditionally fermented alcoholic beverages: the microbial dimension
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Wow, everyone I have heard speak on this topic has totally emphasized that handwashing is best, and for 20 seconds.

They say hand sanitizer is not as good and should be reserved for times when soap and water are not available.

I use hand sanitizer when I enter or leave a store, for example. No sinks in parking lots!
 
Most people are using hand sanitizer when they have to go in and out of some store or building that doesn’t have a soap and water sink readily available.

Many of the toxic hand sanitizers in USA are coming from Mexico. The stores in much of the USA had shelves bare of hand sanitizer for months because the main company that makes it (Gojo/ Purell) didn’t have capacity to make enough and most of the local distilleries and such that made it were prioritizing hospitals, first responders, soup kitchens, and the like. I finally saw some hand sanitizer making its way into (of all places) the local beer store because whatever distillery made it had an in with the beer store. When the regular discount stores and dollar stores and some grocery stores that carry the sanitizer finally restocked, quite a few of them had this methanol junk from Mexico. “Blumen” brand was all over the place in some cities.
 
ATraveller said:
Why public health officials don’t emphasize soap (or laundry detergent or dish detergent) literally causes the virus (and those similar to it) to collapse in 20 seconds is a mystery to me.
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??? Everything I see from them emphasizes thorough handwashing as the first choice, with sanitizer for when that’s not possible.
 
Part of the anger ordinary people felt about Prohibition, and what helped doom it, I’ve read, was that while there were many reports of people of little means getting poisoned by incompetently made bathtub gin, the wealthy had stocked their country club bars and homes with many years’ worth supply of champagne, wine and hard spirits (and since Prohibition prohibited the selling of alcohol, not the consumption of alcohol, they were well provided for and did not have to go blind as a side effect of enjoying an alcoholic beverage).
 
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tomarin said:
Part of the anger ordinary people felt about Prohibition, and what helped doom it, I’ve read, was that while there were many reports of people of little means getting poisoned by incompetently made bathtub gin, the wealthy had stocked their country club bars and homes with many years’ worth supply of champagne, wine and hard spirits (and since Prohibition prohibited the selling of alcohol, not the consumption of alcohol, they were well provided for and did not have to go blind as a side effect of enjoying an alcoholic beverage).
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Prohibition had anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic and I hesitate to add, white supremacist roots. From noted historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.: "The “yokels” of early-20th-century rural America, he writes, had dug in “for a rearguard stand to save morality, patriotism, Prohibition, white supremacy, and the old-time religion (‘traditional values,’ later generations would say) from the Catholics, radicals, wets, atheists, labor organizers, pacifists, Negroes, and foreigners.”
Roselle said:
I originally guessed we’d be seeing articles saying hand sanitizers cause cancer after the mad rush to buy them. Didn’t expect that they could cause blindness.
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Let me point out the forest among the trees: What we have here is an example of unbridled free enterprise in a libertarian setting without much federal oversight. This is an illustration of exactly what such an idea means: A number of innocents are harmed before market forces come to the fore and information is disseminated through a free press to help people avoid the harmful purveyors.
 
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