Alcohol-based hand sanitizers, widely used as a hand cleaner particularly after the COVID pandemic.  Contains ingredients that can be toxic to the eye.  A study in France has found that the incidence of hand sanitizer eye injuries has increased 7 fold since 2018, with some of the cases requiring surgery.

Now, I don’t know about your kids but my kids get greeted at the school gate with a squirt of hand sanitizer.  Ever since the kids have been allowed back to school after lockdown there has been hand sanitizer at the school gates on many of the doors to enter the classrooms.  So I can’t say that I am surprised by this finding.

Due to increased use of the stuff and the fact that we touch our face many more times than we had previously been aware of.  Another thing that I discerned during this time, as we were all told not to touch our faces and that proved harder for most of us than expected.

So what do we do to protect our children’s eyes?  Firstly like any good parent we need to explain why the hand sanitizer is important but also the importance of not touching our face with hands covered in hand sanitizer.

Another problem with hand sanitizer and little people is that due to the high alcohol content if they put their hands in their mouth they may end up with alcohol toxicity.  As small babies/children’s liver is not fully developed and can not process alcohol as effectively as adults can.

All in all, hand sanitizer is a necessary evil that I would imagine is here to stay, so we just need to be wary of what our little people are doing with their hands and the hand sanitizer.