Kids' health focus turning to unsafe hand sanitizers
[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Health.]
By Robert Goldberg
Real Clear Health
This fall, in-person school attendance and activities that take place will be back to nearly normal. While masks will mercifully disappear, other precautions will remain in place. In particular, hand washing and the use of hand sanitizers will become the mainstay of efforts to stop the spread of COVID-19 and other pathogens. To facilitate preventive measures to protect students, teachers and other school personnel, the Food and Drug Administration should swiftly begin enforcing safer standards for hand sanitizers and partnering with suppliers and customers to remove subpar products from the market.
During the height of the pandemic, demand for hand sanitizer soared. In response, the FDA allowed the marketing of the alcohol-based hand sanitizer with less than the 60 percent ethanol (also referred to as ethyl alcohol) that the Centers for Disease Control recommends. Many of the more common hand sanitizers have 70 percent.
Some companies with limited-to-no experience manufacturing hand sanitizer entered the fray. These products are still on the market, so parents have to take care they aren’t buying products with low efficacy rates and even dangerous, particularly for young children.
Just last month, the FDA noted that a company called Modern Medical was “recalling 50,000 units of Medically Minded hand sanitizers with lot numbers E212020 and E082020, and best buy dates of May 21, 2022. An FDA analysis found the product to contain methanol, which can result in a coma, seizures, permanent blindness, permanent damage to the central nervous system, or death.”
That’s not exactly what you’d want from a product that’s part of the toolkit schools use to protect teachers and students from the spread of COVID-19 and other pathogens.
Three months ago, the Food and Drug Administration sent out an alert that said many of the hand sanitizer products made in 2020 contain less than 50 percent alcohol. In some cases, the alcohol content is less than 25 percent, which cannot kill viruses or bacteria.
There’s another reason to ensure that hand sanitizers meet FDA standards: Both the CDC and FDA have found that some children (and grownups) are drinking hand sanitizer.
Products that contain methanol are toxic., yet a recent study published in the medical journal Pediatrics found that during the pandemic there were"18,099 calls to poison control centers for ingestion of hand sanitizer, a 43% increase from pre-pandemic years.”
In some cases, schools are refilling and adding to higher quality products with dangerous ones, thus lowering their efficacy and posing a danger to the end-user. Schools should refrain from the practice of refilling or “topping off” with dangerous, lower-quality products. In addition to being hazardous to students, teachers, and parents, it also illegal.
Post-COVID, it will only take a handful of sick children to trigger school closures and disrupt daily life. The use of high-quality sanitizers is one of the most effective ways to reduce the number of colds and viruses children get. After a year of being stay-at-home parents and children, everyone, especially our kids, wants to get back to school. Proper use of effective sanitizing gels as part of a hand hygiene program can help make that happen.
There is now enough high-quality sanitizer for personal and school use to protect our children. We have to ensure that parents and schools have access to these products and have the most up-to-date information on which sanitizers are safe and effective. Doing so means that school administrators, public health officials, and manufacturers crack down on the distribution of ineffective and potentially dangerous hand sanitizer products. Above all, the FDA – which has admirably protected the public health during the pandemic – must be empowered to finish the job by raising the standards for new products and enforcing them.
Robert Goldberg is vice president at the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest and co-host of the Patients Rising podcast.
[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Health.]
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