I rarely pass along emails that I get because most of the time they prove to be an urban legend but according to snopes this one is true.




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 different 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 through what my family and I have gone through. 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.



The snopes site that confirms this is:
http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/sanitizer.asp

Scary stuff!

Audrey

Wow, thanks for the info...that's pretty scary. I wonder what made the teacher come to the ER?

There have been recent reports regarding prisons/treatment centers etc, having to ban hand sanitizers because it's being abused by inmates/patients...
It's made with the same type of alcohol that is used for drinking. Google "hand sanitizer and alcoholics" and you will see the links. You have to wonder what would compel a small child to want to lick that stuff. I guess they better remove the fruity/flowery scented stuff and make something that tastes really bitter.

Holy smokes... Thanks for the heads up... I would never have given hand sanitizer a second thought! That really is scary. Thanks for the link too.
Michele

I agree thanks for the info. I would have never thought of that either. I make my kids use it everyday before we go to lunch. I guess I'll watch them closely these last few (9) more days of school.

Wow! Thank you for this info! Very thoughtful of you. I will pass it on to whoever I know...

Oh my gosh! That's so scary! I'm glad she didn't die, because that would have been so sad!

I checked out another web site...truth or fiction.com and here is what they reported, the story was true but...she didn't rub the sanitizer into her hands. I thout the it was Isoproply alcohol and didn't think that worked the same as "other" alcohol.

I don't use that stuff much, I just think there is too much anti-bacterial stuff around anyway...the little germs are mutating and will eventually find a way to beat that stuff too.

Thanks for the story though, we all need to be made more aware of the dangers of that.

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.

Hand Sanitizer is a great thing, to a point. What happened to old fashioned soap and water?? Being in the medical field, I certainly understand about aseptic standards but tend to feel there can be too much of a good thing, just as Beth pointed out.

Who would have thought a child would eat hand sanitizer??

Thats scary! Thanks for the heads up.

Good old soap and water over here in the Uk still..........You can buy it but not used in schools,TMK

I also thought it was isopropyl alcohol. WOw, what would possess them to use the other stuff in there? We've removed it from cough medicine haven't we?

I used a ton of this stuff when the babies were small and still use it from time to time, but AFTER I already washed my hands. I know they use great quantities of it at school without also washing. I'll have a talk with my kids about it. But I always preferred plain old-fashioned soap and water. I always had a little ick problem with using the sanitizer if you didn't already wash your hands. So the kid still has paint (or worse! ) ON his hands but hey, the germs are gone? It didn't make sense to me, but I am obsessive about clean hands!

Kari, I was the same way when Stevie was a baby. He was in the NICU...they used the Purell hand sanitizer there. The thing was if you had just used the restroom, of course you needed to wash your hands with soap and water. If you were coming in to see your baby, you needed to use the sanitizer. (I loved the smell of the kind they used there)

With having a heart condition, and a questionable immune system, we used that stuff for the first couple of years 24/7. Oh, and believe me, I supplied the kids classrooms with it also. I didn't need someone coming home sick, spreading it to Stevie.

So, it's a good thing...looks like you just have to watch that the kiddo's don't eat the stuff.

It is a good thing. However, as Beth pointed out, too much of a good thing is NOT a good thing.

And I can't see NOT washing your hands after using the restroom, even if sanitizer is available! Guess that's my medical background coming out.

I will pass this to my son's teacher. They use the "germ juice" before snack recess. All of them line up to use it. Yikes, somes changes need to be made with this product.