Alcohol-based hand sanitizers are meant to help keep kids safe from germs, but when kids misuse them, the sanitizers may cause harm. Cases have been reported of kids with eye irritation, vomiting, and even a few cases of kids ingesting sanitizer and winding up in a coma, according to a new report. From 2011 to 2014, there were more than 70,000 calls to poison control centers across the US for children ages 12 and under who ingested, inhaled or got hand sanitizer in their eyes, according to the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Hand sanitizers that contained alcohol were cited in more than 65,000 of the calls, the CDC researchers said. Alcohol-based hand sanitizers contain either ethanol, which is found in alcoholic beverages or isopropyl alcohol, also known as rubbing alcohol. Sanitizers can contain 60 to 95 % alcohol by volume; non-alcohol based hand…
