How To Make 75% Alcohol Hand Sanitizer Spray
Hello everyone, my name is Amelia Rochelle Narain. Owner and founder of In My Garden Health and Lifestyle. I help promote health and wellness: physically, mentally, and spiritually. Here I wanted to talk about something that has really been bugging me. And that subject is Hand Sanitizers. Everywhere you turn there is another hand sanitizer. Everyone is making hand sanitizers. Some people make 75% alcohol hand sanitizer spray, some make 80%, some 90%. The question is: which one should we use?
Types Of Alcohol
We see out there different alcohol percentages: 70%, 91%, and even 99%. Hand sanitizers are made from one of two things. One of them is Ethanol, a type of alcohol and it’s primarily made from corn. The companies in the U.S. that are making ethanol were previously distilleries; so they were making alcohol. With the COVID shortage, they were given permission by the FDA to flip their distilleries and make hand sanitizer. The products they make are called Ethanol. So when you buy a hand sanitizer I encourage you to look in the back and see what it is.
Hand sanitizers can also be made from Isopropyl alcohol. Again, for alcohol percentages, there is 70%, 91%, 99%. With all of these different numbers, which one do we choose? If you were to make your own hand sanitizer, isn’t more better? If you start with 99% to make your sanitizer, it’s going to make it really strong…isn’t that better? No.
Talking about isopropyl alcohol, it comes in 99%. The higher the number, the dryer the alcohol. How can it be dry if it’s a liquid? What I mean is that when you open it and pour it on something, it evaporates quickly. 99% isopropyl alcohol is used primarily in the electronic technology industry. They use alcohol at that grade in order to clean metal or electronic products. And they are not worried about it corroding because there is not much water in it, almost instantly it dries! So would that not be better to treat a virus or a bacteria? Isn’t higher more effective? Not in this scenario. Why not?
Find out more about ethanol alcohol here.
Making Your Own Hand Sanitizer
Have you ever heard of the phrase called denature? When we have high alcohol content (91%, 99%) before we can use it for medical purposes or other purposes like antibacterial gel, we want to add water to it. That’s how we get 70% because water has been added to it which means that it has been denatured. 99% is the highest ever, so even 91% has some water added to it but it is still too high to make hand sanitizer.
Well then, what is the best amount of alcohol that we should use? Since we are in COVID-19, there have been two recommendations. Prior to COVID-19 hand sanitizer was just hand sanitizer. We used that and we were fine. But according to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the CDC, the standard has been lifted to 75% isopropyl alcohol. Or if it’s ethyl alcohol, it has been recommended that you use 80%. Not 60% nor 70%. If it’s Ethel, it needs to be 80% alcohol.
How Alcohol Percentage Affects Covid-19
Why is the World Health Organization and CDC so specific regarding if the alcohol we use is 75% or 80%? Because the objective is that they are trying to kill the COVID virus, so that is the recommended strength. What happens when you use the alcohol, hand sanitizers, or when you use the straight alcohol? Remember when I said higher is drier? If you pour straight alcohol on your hands to clean it or spray it, it will be too dry. When the alcohol touches the virus it has to be able to penetrate to get inside of the virus to kill it.
So we need to use something like 75% like In My Garden Health uses since we make hand sanitizers according to the World Health Organization sanitation formulation. We have a 75% Alcohol Hand Sanitizer Spray. 75% is the standard that has been made by the World Health Organization.
Why 75%? Because it has been denatured, so it has water in it. When it touches the virus, the water penetrates the virus and it pours alcohol immediately into the cell or inside of the virus and kills it. A higher percentage alcohol that is dryer cannot do that. And so to repeat the standards: we need Isopropyl based alcohol hand sanitizers 75% or if it is ethanol you want 80%.
Isopropyl Alcohol Vs. Ethanol Alcohol
Now here something new that I read on an article today and what it was talking about is that there is now a concern, according to the FDA, because there is an allowance for so much byproduct, as it were, inside of the products that they are making. So what the FDA is concerned about is how much byproduct is in that Ethel alcohol. It is carcinogenic and because of that they are trying to begin to backtrack and set standards for how much byproduct there can be in Ethel alcohol.
So don’t we have enough concerns, our food, exposures for cancer? We are being instructed to use hand sanitizers on a daily basis, multiple times a day. But now with isopropyl you don’t have that concern. You don’t have the same concern of exposure for carcinogens as you do with Ethel alcohol (ethanol). So I would recommend when you’re buying a hand sanitizer to pick it up and read the ingredients. It’s probably going to be ethyl alcohol since it’s the most popular around being made in the United States. But make sure that if you use it that you’re using the correct strength which is 80%. And if you want to take a step further and you want to decrease your risk of exposure, I would recommend you try In My Garden Health and Lifestyle 75% Alcohol Hand Sanitizer Spray which has the World Health Organization formulation and is made with isopropyl.
Find out more about isopropyl alcohol here.
Measuring The Strength In Your Hand Sanitizer
Everybody is making hand sanitizers so how do you know if it’s the right strength? Now I don’t expect you to actually have this piece of equipment in your home but should you happen to have it, here’s a little test you can make. To test the strength in your hand sanitizer you can use an alcohol meter, which actually looks like a giant thermometer. What it does is on one side it goes up to 200, and if I was making alcohol for consumption that is the side I would be using. Because remember it gives proof by corn whiskey, which goes all the way to 200. On the other side is black numbers and this is the side we use to measure the strength of the alcohol for hand sanitizers.
I have personally measured the 75% Alcohol Hand Sanitizer Spray that In My Garden Health and Lifestyle makes and you can be sure, we are accurate: Isopropyl 75% according to the World Health Organization. And like I said if you have a device, you can measure the strength of your hand sanitizers, but it should’ve had already been checked for accuracy…but you never know!
So I hope that you have learned something with all this valuable information. Please everyone stay well, take care, and use the best products available to you. Again I am Amelia Rochelle Narain: Nurse Practitioner, Owner, and Founder of In My Garden Health and Lifestyle. Until next time!
To order your 75% Alcohol Hand Sanitizer Spray click here.