5 ms·

I'd be curious to see whether we actually see an uptick in cancers in the coming months/years. If so, I wonder whether it will turn out that using hand sanitize

I'd be curious to see whether we actually see an uptick in cancers in the coming months/years. If so, I wonder whether it will turn out that using hand sanitizer resulted in a net increase or decrease in overall mortality. Evidence that Covid spreads through surfaces is sparse and that route of transmission is no longer emphasized by the CDC https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00251-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00251-4. While the IFR of COVID varies, it appears to be below 1% for most regions of the world, https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.13.20101253v3 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.13.20101253v.... Could anyone who is more informed than me estimate what the increased mortality would be for those who religiously use hand sanitizer with this level of benzene? My guess is still lower than COVID but I have no reference point.

bitcharmer 6y ago
I'm getting this strange vibe from your comment that somehow sanitizer-induced cancer might be a greater problem than COVID, which doesn't agree with common sense if you ask me. What am I missing here?
- _red 6y ago
  You better double-mask up to be safe!!!
- DennisP 6y ago
  They didn't say it's a worse problem than covid. They said it might be a worse problem than getting covid from touching stuff, since that turned out to be way less common than airborne droplet transmission.
- tbabb 6y ago
  I think the proposal is that sanitizer induces more risk than it mitigates, since it's now unlikely that hand sanitation is related to covid transmission. Nonetheless, other things are transmitted by unclean hands, which is almost certainly a greater risk than the benzene.
- CivBase 6y ago
  That's because it's not common sense to compare sanitizer-induced cancer rates to overall COVID rates. To determine whether the use of hand sanitizer is a net positive, you have to compare the deaths caused by hand sanitizer to the deaths prevented by hand sanitizer. Unfortunately, it would be pretty difficult to get accurate numbers for either of those figures, even if you just narrow it down to cancer and COVID.
  - da_big_ghey 6y ago
    But problem is that people getting sanitiser cancer are maybe not the ones who would be dying because corona. If old people are at great risk you can not tell whole population for to do something risking cancers to protecting them. I am young enough and at very very low risk of deaths from corona so am not desiring for to use sanitizer and for to maybe getting benzene cancers.
- RIMR 6y ago
  That's not quite what they were comparing. Comparing deaths caused by COVID to deaths caused by contaminated hand sanitizer isn't a fair comparison. Comparing lives saved by hand sanitizer to lives lost to sanitizer contamination is what I'm reading here, though it seems pretty difficult to measure either.
- xupybd 6y ago
  Limiting action when things fly in the face of common sense is wise. Limiting the questions you ask to common sense is not always wise. Some times the world is counterintuitive, and the only way to find something out is to test it. While it probably is not the case there may be poor outcomes from hand sanitizer. Would they be worse than CoVid, probably not. However given the scope of CoVid all we have to do to test this is wait. If hand sanitizer was to cause that much trouble it would become obvious at scale.
- VLM 6y ago
  Common sense is usually wrong WRT statistics.
- scottrogowski 6y ago
  I agree with most of the other replies to your comment. The world is full of counter-intuitives and I'm genuinely curious about whether this is one. As I said, my guess is that the risk of surface-transmission of COVID is probably still greater than the risk of increased exposure to benzene. But I think given the low risk of surface transmission, it might still be worth a comparison.
- krona 6y ago
  What you're missing is relative risk vs absolute risk. Don't worry, this is a common mistake.
fortran77 6y ago
There's also a problem with people intentionally drinking hand sanitizer to get a buzz: https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200817/toxic-methanol-in-hand-sanitizers-poisonings-continue https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200817/toxic-methanol-in-h...
- amelius 6y ago
  Most hand sanitizers contain a bitter substance to prevent exactly this.
  - Scoundreller 6y ago
    Works for some, but not those that want to drink it.
userbinator 6y ago
I suspect spending a few minutes near a gas station may expose you to more benzene than a year of using this stuff...
- justin66 6y ago
  Seriously, more than a year. One of the hand sanitizers that was tested had as much as 16.1ppm benzene. That's not great, as it's believed that some small portion of benzene a person is exposed to can be absorbed through the skin, but... yeah. 16.1ppm. Gasoline can contain on average 0.62% benzene, and it evaporates quite quickly. Gasoline vapor is genuinely dangerous to human health. (demonstrably less so now that we've stopped putting tetraethyl lead in it, but still)
undefined1 6y ago
also curious if we'll see whether immune systems have been weakened or not by over sanitization.
selimthegrim 6y ago
Given what Ioannidis did with Santa Clara seroprevalence data I’m not sure he’s to be trusted here

bitcharmer 6y ago

I'm getting this strange vibe from your comment that somehow sanitizer-induced cancer might be a greater problem than COVID, which doesn't agree with common sense if you ask me. What am I missing here?

_red 6y ago
You better double-mask up to be safe!!!
DennisP 6y ago
They didn't say it's a worse problem than covid. They said it might be a worse problem than getting covid from touching stuff, since that turned out to be way less common than airborne droplet transmission.
tbabb 6y ago
I think the proposal is that sanitizer induces more risk than it mitigates, since it's now unlikely that hand sanitation is related to covid transmission. Nonetheless, other things are transmitted by unclean hands, which is almost certainly a greater risk than the benzene.
CivBase 6y ago
That's because it's not common sense to compare sanitizer-induced cancer rates to overall COVID rates. To determine whether the use of hand sanitizer is a net positive, you have to compare the deaths caused by hand sanitizer to the deaths prevented by hand sanitizer. Unfortunately, it would be pretty difficult to get accurate numbers for either of those figures, even if you just narrow it down to cancer and COVID.
- da_big_ghey 6y ago
  But problem is that people getting sanitiser cancer are maybe not the ones who would be dying because corona. If old people are at great risk you can not tell whole population for to do something risking cancers to protecting them. I am young enough and at very very low risk of deaths from corona so am not desiring for to use sanitizer and for to maybe getting benzene cancers.
RIMR 6y ago
That's not quite what they were comparing. Comparing deaths caused by COVID to deaths caused by contaminated hand sanitizer isn't a fair comparison. Comparing lives saved by hand sanitizer to lives lost to sanitizer contamination is what I'm reading here, though it seems pretty difficult to measure either.
xupybd 6y ago
Limiting action when things fly in the face of common sense is wise. Limiting the questions you ask to common sense is not always wise. Some times the world is counterintuitive, and the only way to find something out is to test it. While it probably is not the case there may be poor outcomes from hand sanitizer. Would they be worse than CoVid, probably not. However given the scope of CoVid all we have to do to test this is wait. If hand sanitizer was to cause that much trouble it would become obvious at scale.
VLM 6y ago
Common sense is usually wrong WRT statistics.
scottrogowski 6y ago
I agree with most of the other replies to your comment. The world is full of counter-intuitives and I'm genuinely curious about whether this is one. As I said, my guess is that the risk of surface-transmission of COVID is probably still greater than the risk of increased exposure to benzene. But I think given the low risk of surface transmission, it might still be worth a comparison.
krona 6y ago
What you're missing is relative risk vs absolute risk. Don't worry, this is a common mistake.

fortran77 6y ago

There's also a problem with people intentionally drinking hand sanitizer to get a buzz: https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200817/toxic-methanol-in-hand-sanitizers-poisonings-continue https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200817/toxic-methanol-in-h...

amelius 6y ago
Most hand sanitizers contain a bitter substance to prevent exactly this.
- Scoundreller 6y ago
  Works for some, but not those that want to drink it.

userbinator 6y ago

I suspect spending a few minutes near a gas station may expose you to more benzene than a year of using this stuff...

justin66 6y ago
Seriously, more than a year. One of the hand sanitizers that was tested had as much as 16.1ppm benzene. That's not great, as it's believed that some small portion of benzene a person is exposed to can be absorbed through the skin, but... yeah. 16.1ppm. Gasoline can contain on average 0.62% benzene, and it evaporates quite quickly. Gasoline vapor is genuinely dangerous to human health. (demonstrably less so now that we've stopped putting tetraethyl lead in it, but still)

undefined1 6y ago

also curious if we'll see whether immune systems have been weakened or not by over sanitization.

selimthegrim 6y ago

Given what Ioannidis did with Santa Clara seroprevalence data I’m not sure he’s to be trusted here