Many people are now at least familiar with hand sanitizers and have an awareness that hand sanitizers should contain at least 60% alcohol. What becomes confusing is the alcohol percentage? And it appears that many “off brands” do not understand it either.
The 60% alcohol content as recommended by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) is by volume in the total hand sanitizer solution! Not what percentage of alcohol was used to make the hand sanitizer solution.
How Can a Hand Sanitizer that says 75% Alcohol really be only 15% Alcohol?
For example, if a company used 75% alcohol to make their hand sanitizer, but added 80% water, the hand sanitizer solution would be only 15% alcohol by volume. With the CDC recommended minimum at 60%, that is 45% below the CDC minimum! And 65% less alcohol than SaniX80™ Extreme Sanitizer.
Unfortunately, that was not an extreme example, but taken from a label of a new hand sanitizer now available and selling thru Facebook and Google Ads. Below is a copy of the label ingredients. The first thing that is a giant tip-off is that it is nearly 80% water! Even if the remaining 20% were 100% alcohol, the final solution would only be 20% alcohol by volume! But they only used 75% alcohol to start with so the as shown above, this hand sanitizer is only 15% alcohol.
|
Ingredients
|
|
|
Purified Water
|
79.58%
|
|
75% Alcohol
|
20%
|
|
Carbomer
|
0.20%
|
|
Thriethanolamine
|
0.20%
|
|
Silver
|
0.02%
|
|
Bottle Size：
|
10.9×3.0x4.5cm
|
|
Volue:
|
70ml
|
|
Net Weight：
|
77.9g
|
|
Unit Weight:
|
85.7g
|
This hand sanitizer is clearly not FDA compliant. Therefore, it is illegal and potentially dangerous! The FDA is very strict on what additional ingredients are added to hand sanitizers. “Triethanolamine” is not even spelled correctly (or Volume) and what is “Silver” doing in a hand sanitizer?
We could continue with other examples of what to stay away from in hand sanitizers and there are probably more on the way! The key to evaluating a hand sanitizer is “read the label!”
Number 1 – Understand clearly that the alcohol content “by volume” is 60% or above.
Number 2 – Look at the water content. If the hand sanitizer contains more than 40% water, then even if it was made with 100% alcohol it would be below 60% alcohol by volume.
Number 3 – See what other ingredients are listed. Glycerin/Glycol, Alo Vera, Hydrogen Peroxide are the most common. Other ingredients should sound the warning bells!
How does SaniX80™ Extreme Sanitizer compare? First, it is made from 100% alcohol and the other ingredients (Glercin, Hydrogen Peroxide, and purified water) total 20% of the volume. Therefore, SaniX80e™ Extreme Sanitizer is a “true” 80% Alcohol by volume!
Leave a Reply