FDA warns against for certain hand sanitizers
OLD CITY - The FDA has just released a new warning regarding hand sanitizers that everyone should know about.
It’s a recall that includes 59 products that could be poisonous if ingested.
They’re in dispensers and pump bottles. They come in in family sizes, pocket size squirt bottles. They’re liquids and gels and even sprays. People have been using them well before the COVID crisis.
“How often do you use it,” asked FOX 29’s Joyce evans.
“Every second I can,” replied Markea McBride.
“I use it a lot,” Travis Osbourne admitted.
“I keep a bottle of it in my car door. Every time I come out of a store or something,” Cory Glover stated.
“Every time I pass a thing. It’s crazy,” Maria said.
“Sometimes I think I use it too much now, but it’s ingrained in my head to use it a lot,” Byron added.
“Do you know what’s in your hand sanitizer,?” Evans asked.
“I have no idea, no,” George Morgan answered.
“Alcohol. That’s about it,” McBride answered.
“Alcohol!” exclaimed Maria.
“You don’t actually know what you’re using. Walk into a store, put your hand under a sensor, squirt whatever it is in our hands. We don’t actually know what it is,” explained Glover.
Unfortunately, Glover is right. According to scientists at the FDA and CDC.
The warning lists keeps growing. Almost 60 hand sanitizers tested, coming mostly from Mexico, are found to have a toxic alcohol, called methanol, which can be poisonous when absorbed through the skin or ingested by mouth.
“I don’t know this. This is new. New to me,” McBride stated.
“I told you it’s gonna be something’s gonna be wrong,” Maria stated.
So, we shouldn’t be using hand sanitizer?” Byron asked.
Local and national medical say the brands may no be well known or readily available in certain areas, but in a time when store shelves are bare and people are hunting online for any kind, a type with methanol may pop up while searching.
Symptoms include vomiting, loss of vision and death.
“I would check the ingredients,” Morgan said.
“I’m gonna slow down,” Byron said.
“We’ll just find soap and water,” Maria added.
Read more on the products to watch out for on the FDA website here.
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