Doctors Warn Not To Drink Hand Sanitizer

(WebMD)  Hand sanitizer isn't a drink, but doctors report two cases of men who drank it for its alcohol.

Both men survived, but doctors say drinking hand sanitizer could be fatal.

The cases are described in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The first involved a 49-year-old prison inmate in Maryland who got drunk one night by drinking a hand sanitizer containing ethyl alcohol.

Other inmates and prison staff reportedly saw the man drink from a gallon of the sanitizer over the course of an evening, write Suzanne Doyon, MD, and Christopher Welsh, MD.

Doyon works at the Maryland Poison Center in Baltimore; Welsh is on staff at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore.

The man, who hadn't had any other alcohol or drugs that night, recovered with medical care.

The second case involved a 43-year-old alcoholic in Cincinnati who was admitted to a hospital for chest pain.

By the time the man was treated and discharged, he was delirious.

He was readmitted for tests, but before the results came back, "the patient was seen in the bathroom drinking the alcohol-based hand wash from its dispenser," write Ashkan Emadi, MD, PhD, and LeAnn Coberly, MD, of the University of Cincinnati.

"When asked why he ingested the hand cleaner, he pointed to the label, which read, 'Active ingredient 63% v/v isopropyl alcohol.' He explained that this percentage is higher than that in vodka," write Emadi and Coberly.

"Perhaps changing the description on the container from isopropyl alcohol to isopropanol or propane-2-ol would decrease the attraction of these hand sanitizers for potentially dangerous abuse," write Emadi and Coberly.

Doyon and Welsh say health care workers and administrators in hospitals and prisons "should be aware of this potential misuse of the products as intoxicants and should take steps to minimize such use in high-risk populations."

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SOURCES: Doyon, S. The New England Journal of Medicine, Feb. 1, 2007; vol 356: pp 529-530. Emadi, A. The New England Journal of Medicine, Feb. 1, 2007; vol 356: pp 530-531.

By Miranda Hitti
Reviewed by Louise Chang

[jholloway9]

My 4 year old almost died last year from drinking this ***. why? she said it tasted like lemonade.
Where was the media attention to get the word out then??? We have to wait until some low life visibly does it in front of prison guards to hear anything about how bad this stuff really is????

[avigil2]

Another reason why everyone outside of the US thinks we, Americans, are stupid!

[observantx]

Drinking hand sanitizer??

YOU, YOU and YOU!! OUT OF THE GENE POOL, NOW!!

[apdepetris]

"Other inmates and prison staff reportedly saw the man drink from a gallon of the sanitizer over the course of an evening, write Suzanne Doyon, MD, and Christopher Welsh, MD."

And nobody thought to take the bottle away? I realize the other inmates probably didn't care, but you would think the prison staff would realize that it was probably a bad thing.

[dredre2k]

Sounds like we have new candidates for the Darwin Awards; drink away!

[bildooreilly]

Lysol is a better buzz, trust me...

[acauble1]

RIGHT ON 'GunOwnerDan'!!!

I thoroughly support the ingestion of hand sanitizer for grown adults!

As far as the kids, though tragic, would save tax payers millions of dollars in treating these failures of creation/evolution into their "adult" years!

Hey, I hate to be so blunt, but there comes a time when some people just get fed up with our tax dollars being wasted on stupidity.

[gunownerdan]

We should make hand sanitizer much more harmful to drink, then the idiots who drink it could do us all a favor and maybe win a darwin award at the same time!

[thuber5]

Ok, first of all, hand sanitizer costs like 4$ for a container, why not just go buy rubbing alchohol? These crackpots not only are ignorant of the millions of waring labels stuck on the bottles, but they also have no common sense

[migrainegram]

Yep, let's warn the public that one can get drunk (among other things) by drinking hand santizer.

And when kids switch from cough medicine to hand sanitizer some brilliant doc or child psychologist will ask "how could this happen?"