The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has distributed multiple press releases warning consumers and health care individuals not to use certain alcohol-based hand sanitizer products. Due to methanol’s dangerous presence (wood alcohol), a liquid material is often used to create fuel and antifreeze for your vehicle. When rubbed on the skin, it can be toxic and life-threatening when ingested.
The FDA’s effort to prevent certain hand sanitizers from entering the U.S. is by placing them on a critical alert. The FDA is proactively working with specific manufacturers to recall all harmful products and is actively encouraging all retailers to remove products from shelves and online purchase hubs. The FDA has also issued warning letters to Eskbiochem S.A. de C.V., an industrial chemical manufacturing company that resides in Celaya, Mexico. These letters are in a request to halt manufacturing regarding the distribution of its products with undeclared methanol amounts and misleading claims that falsely state the FDA’s approval of their product.
Companies that have purchased the FDA-recalled hand sanitizer are now searching for the challenges of how to handle this faulty material. There may be an opportunity to return these products to the vendor. Still, if the company that purchased the recalled product ends up being forced to dispose of the material themselves, in that case, suppose this will create a more significant complication due to the high alcohol concentration and dumping massive amounts of such product. In that case, it will be registered as hazardous waste when discarded due to its high ignitable potency.
Washing your hands still emphasizes importance amid COVID-19; hand sanitizer needs to be alcohol-based, containing up to 60 percent ethanol enriched substances. The FDA also provided information stating that no drugs, including hand sanitizers, are approved to prevent Coronavirus spread. This leads to a related note that the survey of the amount of disease-causing microbes that the results are ineffective against.