Alcohol-based hand sanitizer is commonly used especially in healthcare setting, over to hand washing with soap and water. However, improper selection of alcohol used in producing hand sanitizer poses other health hazards.

Do you know there are 2 types of ethanol?

First, Absolute Ethanol (ethanol <1% water). Second is Denatured alcohol such as ethanol (ethyl alcohol) that made unfit for human consumption by adding one or denaturants to it. Denatured alcohol can contain 70-99% ethyl alcohol and is most often denaturized with at least 5% methanol.

Methanol is highly toxic, and severe systemic toxicity and even deaths can occur after oral, pulmonary and skin exposures. Hence, methanol must never be used in alcohol-based hand rub, which mostly contains ethanol, isopropyl alcohol, n-propyl alcohol, or their combinations.