Hi All-
Just wanted to send you a quick email and warn you about using hand sanitizers wtih your young kids. We have been using that with Sydney in place of hand washing for convience sake. Today she told me she was going up to her room to get a toy, while I was downstairs feeding Griffin, and after taking longer then it should I called for her. When she didn't answer I knew she was up to something and the bathroom door was closed. She got into the hand sanitizer and had ingested some of it. There wasn't a large amount missing from the bottle but I could smell it on her breath.
Within approx. 10 min. she was all glassy eyed and wobbly in her feet. As the minutes passed, she continued to get worse and got to the point where she couldn't even stand up or walk, it was awful!!
I called poison control immediately and they told me to take her to the ER right away due to the alcohol level in hand sanitizers. As we were driving there her speech became slurred and harder to understand and her eyes looked awful. They admitted her and did urine and blood tests and it turns out that her blood alcohol level was .10 ? which is legally drunk. It turns out that the hand sanitizers (Purell) have 62% alcohol in them and the dr. compared it to her drinking something that is 120 proof.
We had a VERY scary afternoon but thankfully she is ok. We were in the ER until this evening, after spending the whole afternoon there, so they could monitor her and make sure her blood sugars were stable. They said that someone her size would only need to have 3 squirts of it to get to the point of being .10 blood level.
She has always wanted to lick her hands after we use it and we have warned her that it is dangerous and something that kids can't do or they will end up in the hospital. Needless to say, we are going to go back to washing hands with soap and water because it is way to risky and scary to use this stuff seeing how little a child needs to be affected by it. We asked about long term affected with the liver, brain, etc and the dr. said we have nothing to worry about but we need to get rid of all the hand sanitizer in the house.
Just wanted to let you all know so you can learn from our lesson and not have to go through something as scary as this...
Origins: The first alert quoted above (which began circulating via e-mail in mid-January 2007)
http://www.snopes.com/medical/graphics/sanitizer.gifwas written by Jennifer Moe, the mother of a 2-year-old girl who had ingested some hand sanitizer. The second example (May 2007) was written by Lacey Butler, the mother of a 4-year-old girl who had done the same; although it contains some errors of fact or transcription (e.g., a "blood alcohol level [measured at] 85%"), it is a true tale in the sense that 4-year-old Halle Butler, a pre-kindergarten student at Okmulgee Primary School in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, was treated at an area hospital after eating a small amount of hand sanitizer squirted into her palm by a teacher.
While the stories as related in the e-mailed accounts fortunately did not result in death or serious injury, they are cautionary tales worth heeding because they present a scenario that can all too easily be repeated in other households, schools, or daycare centers with small children. Hand sanitizer gels and wipes include a surprising amount of alcohol (e.g., Purell and Germ-X contain 62% Ethyl Alcohol), and a child who swallowed enough of such products could experience what 2-year-old Sydney and 4-year-old Halle went through: intoxication, possibly even alcohol poisoning. "Ingesting as little as an ounce or two of this product could be fatal to a toddler," says Heidi Kuhl, a health educator at the Central New York Poison Control Center. (Other medical technicians maintain that a child would have to ingest considerably more sanitizer than is typically used in a single application in order for alcohol toxicity to be a likely result.)
Bottles of topical anti-bacterials do carry explicit warnings about the danger they pose (e.g., bottles of
Purell hand sanitizer caution: "
Keep out of reach of children. If swallowed, get medical help or contact a Poison Control Center right away.") However, unlike cleaning supplies and numerous other products commonly used in the home,
hand sanitizer isn't generally thought of as something that presents a poisoning danger to children ? folks unthinkingly tend to regard it the way they do hand lotion, as something that can be safely left on a counter or nightstand. Yet such products shouldn't be left within easy reach, not if one has a small child about. While one might think the taste of the product (which in Purell's case is akin to a slightly flowery version of vodka) would keep children from swallowing too much of it, kids can and do get into the darnest things.
More than half the calls received by most poison centers across the country involve children under the age of six. Usually the reported poisoning incidents result in mild or no symptoms, but many carry the potential for severe injury or even death. Parents and caregivers therefore have to be vigilant about reading product labels to determine what items need to be kept well out of reach of tiny hands.
Youngsters are especially at risk of ingesting poisons from ordinary household products due to four factors, notes a 1992
Clinical Pediatrics article:
- Children are naturally curious about most everything, including the taste, smell, and texture of products.
- Children learn about the world through smelling, touching, and tasting. Brightly colored liquids, spray containers, pills, and leafy or flowering plants are all attractive lures to children, who may attempt to learn more about them through spraying, smelling, or swallowing. The mechanics of spray containers are of particular interest to many curious children.
- Children lack the experience and knowledge to distinguish poisons and other non-potables from harmless substances. Children can think that fuels, cough syrup, and shampoo are safe to drink because they resemble beverages such as fruit punch or soft drinks. Children may also find the appearance, taste, or odor of a dangerous substance similar to that of a consumable product: medicine tablets look and taste like candy, anti-freeze tastes sweet, red mouthwash looks like fruit punch, etc.
- Children imitate the behavior of adults and frequently mimic what they see their parents or grandparents do, such as taking medication, drinking colored liquids, cleaning house, and spraying chemicals.
Although the warning's author argues for the outright ban of hand sanitizer from any home where small children reside, it needs be kept in mind that a 2005 study of 292 families by Children's Hospital Boston (in which one-half of the subjects got hand sanitizers, while the other half received literature advising them to wash their hands frequently) found that those who used hand sanitizer gels experienced a 59% reduction in gastrointestinal illnesses, and that increased use of sanitizers corresponded with a decreased spread of contagions (including those resulting in respiratory illnesses).
Barbara "germ warfare" Mikkelson
Last updated: 24 February 2009
