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The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

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Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#91

Post by thereisnospork »

sargun wrote: post #76
loeg wrote: post #3

Tl;dr: ArtNaturals made hand sanitizer with very high levels of benzene (a carcinogen) and after a fire and runoff into the Dominguez Channel, produced a bunch of hydrogen sulfide (the "rotten eggs" smelling gas). When the FDA reimposed pre-pandemic sanitizer rules, companies were forced to dispose of the crap they produced under the lax rules. Some tried to do so by giving it away to schools or illegally dumping it…

I'm curious, where does the benzene come from? Isn't hand sanitizer just ethanol with scents added, and maybe a gelling agent?

Educated guess: From its use as an azeotrope breaker in the distillation of ethanol from water. Normally its impossible to achieve greater than ~95% ethanol from an ethanol water mixture, but it is possible to achieve ~100% ethanol from a water/benzene/ethanol mixture[0].

[0]There of course have been methods invented which do not involve benzene.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#92

Post by loeg »

revelio wrote: post #43
loeg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the medical establishment's position that airborne transmission couldn't be real I remember droplets being the leading theory but do not remember a time when the medical establishment was claiming airborne transmission couldn't be real.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7 "Why the WHO took two years to say COVID is airborne Early in the pandemic, the World Health Organization stated that SARS-CoV-2 was not transmitted through the air. That mistake and the prolonged process of correcting it sowed confusion and raises questions about what will happen in the next pandemic."

> the World Health Organization stated that SARS-CoV-2 was not transmitted through the air.

I mean, I don't believe the WHO actually stated that in those terms. This is probably a paraphrase of a more nuanced statement that erases the nuance.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#93

Post by loeg »

14 wrote: post #62
loeg wrote: post #3

Tl;dr: ArtNaturals made hand sanitizer with very high levels of benzene (a carcinogen) and after a fire and runoff into the Dominguez Channel, produced a bunch of hydrogen sulfide (the "rotten eggs" smelling gas). When the FDA reimposed pre-pandemic sanitizer rules, companies were forced to dispose of the crap they produced under the lax rules. Some tried to do so by giving it away to schools or illegally dumping it…

Now I am a little uneasy about the sanitizer I bought. I walked into Walmart one day and they had these giant bottles of liquid hand sanitizer with a 80% alcohol content and it works great and doesn’t leave a residue. It was on for 25cents a bottle when normally something that size would sell for about $8. I couldn’t believe they were getting rid of it for so cheap so bout about 100 bottles and have been using it for…

Might as well just toss it unless you regularly need to kill bacteria on your hands away from running water.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#94

Post by wewtyflakes »

slily wrote: post #82
wewtyflakes wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the unknowns were high, it seems reasonable that we would err on the side of caution, including using hand sanitizer. I do not see it as insanity, but rather a reasonable thing to do given the unknowns were high at the time.

There's some nuance there. The situation was not nearly as "unknown" as the CDC advocates would like to believe, and the international community provided plenty of evidence for individuals to make more informed decisions. Even early on, the number of case reports of people getting sick despite following recommended practices or not having any contact with potentially contaminated objects made the droplet thesis dubio…

We are remembering things differently. I do not remember any consensus on these items within the first year of the pandemic. I remember things being uncertain. I think demanding vaccines for travel was reasonable, given the circumstances of the time. I do not think the mandates were pointless given what we knew at the time, and I think people who flouted them acted selfishly.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#95

Post by GeekyBear »

loeg wrote: post #89
GeekyBear wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but do not remember a time when the medical establishment was claiming airborne transmission couldn't be real I can remember scientists being accused of spreading "misinformation" for proposing that airborne spread best fit the available data. For instance, at the beginning of the pandemic, passengers of the cruise ship Diamond Princess continued to spread Covid from cabin to cabin while locked down. There was also…

> I can remember scientists being accused of spreading "misinformation" for proposing that airborne spread best fit the available data. This is a much lower bar. You can always find a crank on twitter accusing something of being misinformation. The original claim I responded to was that the medical establishment claimed airborne transmission was impossible. However, the actual take from the medical establishment was…

> The original claim I responded to was that the medical establishment claimed airborne transmission was impossible.

The WHO literally made a blanket statement that Covid was NOT airborne.

> FACT: COVID-19 is NOT airborne.

The CDC also denied airborne spread for quite some time.

>As the pandemic unfolded last year, infectious disease experts warned for months that both the C.D.C. and the World Health Organization were overlooking research that strongly suggested the coronavirus traveled aloft in small, airborne particles. Several scientists on Friday welcomed the agency’s scrapping of the term “close contact,” which they criticized as vague and said did not necessarily capture the nuances of aerosol transmission.

“C.D.C. has now caught up to the latest scientific evidence, and they’ve gotten rid of some old problematic terms and thinking about how transmission occurs,” said Linsey Marr, an aerosol expert at Virginia Tech.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/health/coronavirus-airbor...

The CDC's flip flopping on the issue did not inspire confidence.

>CDC reverses again, now says Covid-19 is 'sometimes' airborne

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/cdc-reverses-agai...

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#96

Post by vharuck »

joenot443 wrote: post #34
commandlinefan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worry about overuse of hand sanitizer creating antibiotic resistant "superbugs" as we've been told for decades... but I sure as hell can't go to a gas station or a grocery store without washing my hands with hand sanitizer any more. I feel like I can see the germs now.

Since you’ve adopted the practice, do you notice yourself getting sick less? I don’t use sanitizer especially often, but I’ve definitely noticed a general, society-wide uptick in being cognizant of germs and cleanliness. I don’t have any figures to back it up, though I’d be curious to see them if they exist, but I definitely notice myself getting sick (cold or flu) _way_ less often, in fact, I think it’s just been on…

Agreed. I also like seeing more sanitizer dispensers when I go in grocery stores or other places where I'm going to touch things many other people touch. Use it on the way in to not spread things to others, then on the way out to not take theirs home. Even better when they provide wipes for cart handles.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#97

Post by Symbiote »

14 wrote: post #62
loeg wrote: post #3

Tl;dr: ArtNaturals made hand sanitizer with very high levels of benzene (a carcinogen) and after a fire and runoff into the Dominguez Channel, produced a bunch of hydrogen sulfide (the "rotten eggs" smelling gas). When the FDA reimposed pre-pandemic sanitizer rules, companies were forced to dispose of the crap they produced under the lax rules. Some tried to do so by giving it away to schools or illegally dumping it…

Now I am a little uneasy about the sanitizer I bought. I walked into Walmart one day and they had these giant bottles of liquid hand sanitizer with a 80% alcohol content and it works great and doesn’t leave a residue. It was on for 25cents a bottle when normally something that size would sell for about $8. I couldn’t believe they were getting rid of it for so cheap so bout about 100 bottles and have been using it for…

Chemists used to wash their hands in benzene!

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#98

Post by giantg2 »

loeg wrote: post #83
giantg2 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The medical ones are not really cloth and contain synthetic materials.

Sure, but the context is industries and products quickly spun up in 2020. Those masks were basic cloth ones, not the surgical masks more common now.

There was a huge production jump for N95s and surgical masks in 2020, included companies that spun up and shipped potentially dangerous products (N95s by unheard of companies not actually being N95 compliant). Their usage is still up compared to pre-pandemic levels.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#99

Post by dahfizz »

loeg wrote: post #24
Footkerchief wrote: post #7

Just one aspect of the huge, tragicomic waste that resulted from the medical establishment's position that airborne transmission couldn't be real because it reminded everyone too much of miasma theory. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ina.13070

> the medical establishment's position that airborne transmission couldn't be real I remember droplets being the leading theory but do not remember a time when the medical establishment was claiming airborne transmission couldn't be real.

> FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne.

- The WHO

https://twitter.com/who/status/1243972193169616898

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#100

Post by f33d5173 »

pers0n wrote: post #13
chaoticmass wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect to covid, I remember it being said that washing your hands with soap was the most effective way to stop the virus spreading from physical contact. Yet the assumption that many people had was that alcohol based hand sanitizer was more effective. Sure, hand sanitizer is better than nothing, but old fashion soap and water was what the doctors recommended. Thats my guess anyway.

You didn’t always have access to a place to wash your hands or soap. Many Native Americans don’t have running water and sanitizer was needed badly, when they asked the government to help they got sent body bags instead

Many people did have access to running water, and were buying up supply that plausibly could have been used by people who didn't.
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