[blparent] hand sanitizer not good for kids

[Amber Boggs]

Here is what Truth or fiction has to say. This sounds way more like the real 
storry. I am with David, 85% would kill her not just make her out of it.
Four-year old Girl Intoxicated From Hand Sanitizer-Truth!
Summary of the eRumor:
The author of the email says her 4-year old daughter ate hand sanitizer at 
pre-school
and was rushed to the hospital with potentially deadly alcohol intoxication.
The Truth:
The story is true, although with one glaring factual error.
According to a Fox 23 Tulsa television interview with her parents, Matt and 
Lacey
Butler, Little Halle was in a pre-kindergarten class at Okmulgee Primary 
School in
Okmulgee, Oklahoma when a teacher did what seemed to be right, gave Halle 
some hand
sanitizer to clean her hands before eating lunch.  Instead of rubbing it in, 
however,
Halle ate it.  She licked it from her hand.  Shortly afterwards her behavior 
was
alarming enough that she was taken to a local hospital.  Matt Butler says 
that when
he arrived at the emergency room, his daughter was leaning against a wall, 
that her
eyes would not focus, and she could not walk.
Doctors determined that she was intoxicated.
The eRumor says her blood alcohol level was 85 percent, which nobody would 
survive
so that figure is obviously wrong.  The writer may have meant to say .85 
percent.
Hand sanitizers have an alcohol level of more than 60 percent.  Hard liquor, 
by comparison,
is 40 percent alcohol while most beers are less than 5 percent alcohol.
Unlike other poisons and alcoholic beverages, however, most hand sanitizers 
are easily
accessible to children and most of us would not think about the danger.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration warns that alcohol can cause 
drunkenness as
well as serious poisoning leading to seizures, coma, and even death in young 
children---and
that children are more sensitive to the toxic effects of alcohol than 
adults.
Updated 5-25-07
A real example of the eRumor as it has appeared on the Internet:
Ok. I don't know where to begin because the last 2 days of my life have been 
such
a blur. Yesterday, My youngest daughter Halle who is 4, was rushed to the 
emergency
room by her father for being severely lethargic and incoherent. He was 
called to
her school by the school secretary for being "very VERY sick." He told me 
that when
he arrived that Halle was barely sitting in the chair. She couldn't hold her 
own
head up and when he looked into her eyes, she couldn't focus them.
He immediately called me after he scooped her up and rushed her to the ER. 
When we
got there, they ran blood test after blood test and did x-rays, every test 
imaginable.
Her white blood cell count was normal, nothing was out of the ordinary. The 
ER doctor
told us that he had done everything that he could do so he was sending her 
to Saint
Francis for further test.
Right when we were leaving in the ambulance, her teacher had come to the ER 
and after
questioning Halle's classmates, we found out that she had licked hand 
sanitizer off
her hand. Hand sanitizer, of all things. But it makes sense. These days they 
have
all kinds of differents scents and when you have a curious child, they are 
going
to put all kinds of things in their mouths.
When we arrived at Saint Francis, we told the ER doctor there to check her 
blood
alcohol level, which, yes we did get weird looks from it but they did it. 
The results
were her blood alcohol level was 85% and this was 6 hours after we first 
took her.
Theres no telling what it would have been if we would have tested it at the 
first
ER.
Since then, her school and a few surrounding schools have taken this out of 
the classrooms
of all the lower grade classes but whats to stop middle and high schoolers 
too? After
doing research off the internet, we have found out that it only takes 3 
squirts of
the stuff to be fatal in a toddler. For her blood alcohol level to be so 
high was
to compare someone her size to drinking something 120 proof. So please 
PLEASE don't
disregard this because I don't ever want anyone to go thru what my family 
and I have
gone thru. Today was a little better but not much. Please send this to 
everyone you
know that has children or are having children. It doesn't matter what age. I 
just
want people to know the dangers of this.
Thank you
Lacey Butler and family
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