Don’t Try to Make Vodka Hand Sanitizer
If you’ve visited your local grocery store or pharmacy in the past few weeks looking for hand sanitizer, you’re probably running into problems. Coronavirus fears have made hand sanitizer sold out almost everywhere, and if you’ve been on social media lately, almost everyone has a recipe for how you should make your own. Except, which you probably shouldn’t, especially with vodka.
Last week, our health editor took some hand sanitizer recipes to try and ran into problems . She notes that a hand sanitizer recipe can be easily ruined. One of the simplest mistakes can be not drinking enough alcohol. DIY hand sanitizer will also be quite aggressive on your skin. There’s a reason products like Purell exist and people don’t usually try to make them at home.
Making hand sanitizer requires rubbing alcohol, and ambitious DIYers bought a lot of it from stores as well, leading others to suggest replacing this alcohol with vodka.
The vodka recipe was even shared on Twitter by a politician in my state. Sounds legal. Vodka is just alcohol, right? Except that the vodka you buy from the store has been watered down to make it smart to drink, which means it’s not strong enough to actually kill germs and work as a hand sanitizer. If you make hand sanitizer out of it, you’re essentially just wasting your vodka.
Vodka brand Tito’s shared with PSA from its Twitter accept on Thursday, noting that hand sanitizer must contain at least 60% alcohol according to the CDC. Since Tito has 40%, he won’t meet the standards you want.
Both Tito and the CDC note that “hand washing with soap and water is the best way to get rid of germs in most situations.” Save this vodka for drinking.
Update 3/11/2020: The proposal in this post originally stated that diluting the vodka “means it is no longer strong enough to actually kill bacteria and work as a hand sanitizer.” While this is true, hand sanitizer can also protect against viruses, including coronavirus, and not just bacteria. Thanks to those who pointed out that we checked the wrong germs by name.