A Greener Hand Sanitizer for Cold Season?
by Sara Novak, Columbia, SC 
on 01. 4.09
photo: Focus Organic
With cold season in full swing it would be nice to be able to squirt some sanitizer on your hands and avoid a cold for the whole year. Well, that's just not possible. But in a pinch, parents love to use this stuff to prevent the spread of germs on the go. Now a greener hand sanitizer is claiming to be as effective as the conventional ones, but without the scary ingredients.
Natural CleanWell hand sanitizers kill 99.99 percent of germs while being 100 biodegradable just in time for cold season. CleanWell’s kid-friendly sanitizers, soaps, and wipes are made with ingredients from renewable plants such as thyme that don’t require pesticides during their growing process.
CleanWell also doesn't include Triclosan, an ingredient that has gotten a pretty bad wrap. Triclosan, widely used as an antibacterial ingredient in household hand sterilization products, breaks down rapidly when exposed to chlorinated water and produces toxic chemicals including chloroform. According to a study published on the Environmental Science & Technology research website As Soon As Publishable (ASAP), many antibacterial products may not only be ineffective, but harmful.
According to Cleanwell's Web site, however, the product doesn't disrupt the eco-system. It's also free of toxins like Triclosan and cruelty-free (not tested on animals).
Lloyd previously discussed how hand sanitizers can do more harm than good. According to Scientific American, it appears that after spraying a counter with an antibiotic cleaner, some chemicals linger and continue to kill bacteria but don't neccessarily get all of them. The ones that survive develop a tolerance. That's scary stuff. The jury is still out as to whether that's true of natural sanitizers.
The bottom line: people love hand sanitizer. So if you're going to use it, you might as well try a greener version. But green or not, antibacterial products scare me. Maybe it's a result of my best friend in college who developed an addiction to the stuff and then later seemed to be unable to escape even the wimpiest virus. Whether there's a connection, I don't know. I'll stick with organic soap and water.
More on Cold Season:
Cure the Common Cold the Green Way
How to Use a Neti Pot to Clear Up Your Sinuses
Improve the Environmental Health in Your Home
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This is a seriously confused article, conflating hand sanitizers with antibacterials (and even at one point, antibiotics). Let's be clear: Hand sanitizers are just grain alcohol and a gel; most have a fragrance added. That's it.
They DO NOT have triclosan.
And they're far more effective at removing dangerous bacteria than soap and water -- there's some evidence in hospital situations that soap and water scrubs can actually tilt the bacterial flora of your hands toward pathogens.
I think Treehugger should post a prominent correction to this article. It does us all a disservice.
I saw this in Wegman's the other day and was surprised that a plant based ingredient would be effective. I guess we'll see how well it does after some sales and reviews. I still wouldn't buy it though, we're meant to be exposed to some bad things once in a while and not live in an antibacterial bubble our whole lives.
I have been using this product for a year and am a fan. Of course it's hard to tell how well something works, not knowing how often i would have gotten sick... I keep it in my car using it before and after dropping my girls off at school and after going shopping.
As I said, I like the product and I like to believe that it helps.
@Bill Noble: Sorry to correct you, but some sanitizers DO have triclosan in them. Not all, but some. See GoodGuide for examples. Also, nowhere in the article does the author suggest that soap and water are sufficient for operating room situations. For the bulk of non-surgeons out there, though, soap and water and an appropriate amount of time washing are all one needs to remove most harmful bacteria from hands.
So in my opinion, no correction is necessary from TreeHugger.
+1 to Bill Noble's comment. The points about Triclosan posing a problem from a bacterial resistance perspective are fine, but they don't pertain to hand sanitizers. The active ingredient in my Purel is ethyl alcohol.
A greener hand sanitizer may be worthwhile if it gets rid of chemicals that form the gel, like propylene glycol.
Antibacterial Hand Soaps kill most Bacterias. You can't kill viruses with anti-bacterial hand soaps So your friends in college that used the hand soaps may still get sick if they got exposed to most viruses.
I've been using CleanWell for awhile, and while there's nothing I can point to to prove its effectiveness, I've had a pretty mild cold season so far. I don't think it weakens my immune system; I'm getting exposed to plenty of germs on a day to day basis to keep in shape, thanks.
I use thymol in its original form (i.e. from plants such as thyme and monarda) when I want a mild antiseptic and don't want to use rubbing alcohol for some reason*, and it works pretty well. I agree it seems weird that we would have had to invent all these complicated antieverything synthetics if a strong thyme tea really worked just as well, and I'd love to have the time and resources to test it against isopropyl in petri dishes myself, but since I can't... If I were really worried about something I would go straight to my doctor, but for the occasional household use, CleanWell is good enough for me.
I also like that CleanWell sells refill bottles for their hand pump dispensers. When I saw that I got pumps and a refill for my office (and one promptly disappeared, probably filched by a client).
(*proximity to eyes, for instance.)
How about "Don't use hand sanitizers"?
The bacteria and viruses on your hands can lead happy, healthy lives down the drain and not harm anyone, whereas if you decide to kill 99.9% of them instead of just washing them off, that 0.1% that are resistant to the antibacterial chemicals you use will form a thriving colony on your computer's keyboard and desk.
Then you will take them home and give them to your family, who will give them to everyone at work and school, and so on and so forth, until the only bacteria and viruses in the world are the ones that can't be killed by the chemicals in hand sanitizer. Then we will have to invent more toxic chemicals to kill 99.9% of them off, and the cycle begins anew. We also like to call this "evolutionary biology".