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Comment by donut2d | Hacker News Reader

Do you know what works great as hand sanitizer? Rubbing alcohol - no scent, no additives, no gummy weirdness, and cheaper.

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Just make sure it’s 70% - that’s the optimal number. Also 70% alcohol without buffer like aloe Vera will be quite harsh on the hands...

70% is for bacteria. That helps the isopropyl alcohol get absorbed into the cell.

Coronavirus is a virus and isn’t alive. The alcohol disrupts the outer lipid layer which deactivates the virus. So 70% doesn’t apply here.

Considering that most hand sanitizer is simply alcohol + aloe gel - yes this makes sense, but aloe is in there for a reason (alcohol is incredibly harsh on your skin).

It's really rough on the hands - dries them out terribly.

You can use glycerin to help with that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgY04l0CuEs

know what’s even better? plain old soap.

Soap is great but requires people to go through the much more rigorous and unavailable method of washing hands. Hand sanitizers are much faster and easier, which makes sanitization available in areas where it wasn't previously. For example in the office, school, stores, anywhere you're handling materials, etc.

You should absolutely wash hands too, but there are a lot of reasons for portable hand sanitizers.

but sanitizer is egregiously overused by the public, and most of it is doing nothing but pressing adaptation in microbes rather than reducing infections. it's useful in certain food-handling, waste-handling and healthcare settings, but not in most common situations like (semi-)public spaces and handling ordinary materials.

the amount of friction presented by washing likely produces a more ideal balance between considerations like infection reduction, evolutionary pressure, and hypochondria/mysophobia inducement. the simple rule of thumb is to wash around waste, food prep/consumption, and illness. more than that, especially most sanitizer use because it's mostly outside of these situations, is likely a net-negative.

It is pretty unlikely microbes are going to be building up resistance to the microbial equivalent of getting doused in gasoline and set on fire.

It dissolves the lipid shell and denatures key proteins in the shell. This is not subtle.

In the evolutionary influence perspective for a microbe, it also still isn’t particularly common. Triclosan and the other problematic chemicals are much more targeted and more problematic from a resistance perspective because of it.

Can’t easily wash my hash my hands with soap in my car.

What sort of peasant doesn't have an entire lavatory in one's automobile?

My bike has one so I don’t know how a car couldn’t.

Actually, there is dry soap nowadays, but you still need a little bit of water.

I’d really hesitate before depending on that to any extent health wise. Water is an amazing solvent, and you get huge benefit from washing things away in it after oils and similar hydrophobic substances have been de-hydrophobic’d

Yep. Made a little portable sink for my trunk. After going anywhere, we dip our hands in the bucket, grab a bar and start scrubbing. Made a rinse hose out of some tygon tubing and a clamp. Oh sure, we get some stares, but it sure beats the cancer risk!

The best thing is that it evaporates very quickly and isn’t toxic like the Clorox cleaners. But it also dissolved some inks which sucks.

I have a 2 year supply of isopropyl alcohol now. I hoarded last year and have way more than I will need because I stopped cleaning groceries and washing down countertops because I stopped believing it did anything. But better save than sorry!

Wait, what? Rubbing alcohol definitely has a scent.

The other additives in hand sanitizer can be anything from methanol to discourage consumption (and avoid liquor taxes) and fragrances. I've bought some little bottles before that leave such a strong fragrance you have to go wash your hands before eating anything anyway.

Nothing that lasts more than a dozen seconds or so.

Isn't that what most of them are? Just ISO + glycol for thickness?

Most are fuel/technical/food grade denatured ethyl alcohol (ethanol) with glycerin (glycerol) as a humectant/thickener. IPA is allowable but more expensive.

A number of them have been made from the heads and tails of normal spirit distillation process (which are waste products), or are distilled with other organic waste products (like dog food process waste), which often smell awful and are super sticky.

I bought a gallon of some stuff early into the pandemic from a online retailer that sells commercial fog machine supplies. It smells likes farts. I felt bad giving bottles of it to friends and family but it wasn't like there was much else available on the shelves and at the time touch contamination was still a big concern. I added some fragrances so it smells mostly like lemons now and only a hint of farts.

We bought another gallon from a cosmetics supply wholesaler and it was much less stinky.

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