Why the new trend of kids getting drunk off of hand sanitizer is more dangerous than you think

The “Harmless” Threats in Your Home – Why the New Trend of Kids Getting Drunk Off Of Hand Sanitizer Is More Dangerous Than You Think

As parents, some of the key things that we are responsible for monitoring is their safety, their health, and their general wellbeing. Humans are highly curious beings and kids are probably the most prime example of curiosity.

Curiosity can be a very good trait for your kids to have and parents are often encouraged to promote this type of behavior in their children. Innate curiosity in kids promotes the development of their intellect and their instinctive problem solving skills. However, like the popular proverb says – curiosity killed the cat – and there is some amount of truth in this statement, curiosity can be a good trait to have but it can also get your kids in trouble.

This is the issue that many American parents have on their plate now when it comes to their kids. Curious and naive kids all across the country have taken to drinking common liquid hand sanitizer – a dangerous trend that can quite possibly be fatal.

So what’s The Deal with This New Hand Sanitizer Drinking Trend?

In 2015 the Georgia Poison Control Center conducted a study that subsequently showed that, since 2010, there was an approximate 400 percent increase in calls that were in some way related to the ingestion of hand sanitizer in children under the age of twelve.

That means that there were five times as many calls at that time compared to a similarly observed time frame in 2010 – clear cut evidence that this trend was (and still is) spreading.

It’s not weird to see adults needing the services of a drug and alcohol abuse counselor but when a teen needs this then it becomes far more tragic.

But Why Are Kids Drinking Hand Sanitizer?

There are a few reasons why so many kids nowadays have taken to drinking hand sanitizer.

Hand Sanitizer Looks Attractive To Young Children Remember what we said earlier about kids and their innate curiosity? Well this reason behind them drinking hand sanitizer is directly related to this.

There is a large subset of popular hand sanitizers that have extremely pleasant scents that are used to mask the strong alcohol smell (more on this later). While floral scents are extremely popular, there are also a lot of hand sanitizers that make use of food related scents and even candy like scents – scents that highly likely to be very attractive to young kids.

In addition to this, a lot of hand sanitizers are packaged in bottles that are brightly colored, and the actual hand sanitizer itself can even have pieces of glitter laced into it.

All of these factors (whether that are present together or separately) make ingesting hand sanitizer an attractive prospect for young kids – if it smells nice and looks pretty then why not drink it!

Hand Sanitizer Can Get You Drunk (At a Possibly Fatal Cost) Young kids and teenagers learn a lot from their parents, other adults, and even their peers. This learning can either be active or passive and it can be

hard to realize what and when your child is picking up new learned behaviors.

Any professional drug and alcohol abuse counselor will tell you that your usage of drugs or alcohol may not only be a threat to your health but also the health of your children as well.

If your teen sees you, your spouse, other family members, or even your friends, drinking wine or beer on a regular basis then they might learn from this behavior and want to experience it for themselves. Think about it, if your thirteen year old son sees you and your buddies having a rowdy great time drinking beers with your friends and watching the game, then he might associate alcohol (and maybe getting drunk) with “having a good time”.

There has been an ever increasing number of cases of teens being hospitalized because of alcohol poisoning from ingesting hand sanitizer. What’s probably even scarier is that there are multiple tutorials online that give kids step by step instructions on how to extract alcohol treatment centers California from hand sanitizer.

Drinking hand sanitizer puts you at a greater risk of alcohol poisoning compared to common liquors. Hand sanitizers usually contain approximately 60% ethyl alcohol but they can contain as much as 95% in some rare cases.

When you compare this to common alcoholic beverages like beer (5% – 10%) and wine (10% – 15%), then hand sanitizer has them beat multiple times over in terms of alcohol content.

The Bottom Line Alcohol poisoning can have various negative effects on a person; including but not limited to: vomiting, respiratory arrest, drowsiness, and even death.

If your child has been known to experiment with dangerous substances or you just want to prevent problems in the future, then a drug and alcohol abuse counselor may be just what your family needs.

Sources American Association of Poison Control Centers – Hand Sanitizers National Center for Biotechnology Information – Acute ethanol poisoning in a 4-year-old as a result of ethanol-based hand-sanitizer ingestion Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – Show Me the Science - When & How to Use Hand Sanitizer