As news broke over the weekend about Oregon’s first coronavirus case, frenzied shoppers stocked up on hand sanitizer, emptying many store shelves.
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If you weren’t able to snap up a bottle of hand sanitizer before stores sold out, you can make your own. You find the basic ingredients in any drug store and most grocery stores.
Here’s what you need:
- 2/3 cup Isopropyl alcohol 91% (rubbing alcohol)
- 1/3 cup aloe vera gel
- Essential oil in your choice of fragrance (optional)
- A small or medium mixing bowl
- A spoon
- An empty container, such as a 3-ounce container from a travel toiletries kit
- A small piece of masking tape for labeling
Here’s how to make it:
In a mixing bowl, stir Isopropyl alcohol and aloe vera gel together until well blended.
Add 8-10 drops of scented essential oil (optional, but nice!). Stir to incorporate.
Pour the homemade hand sanitizer into an empty container and seal. Write “hand sanitizer” on a piece of masking tape and affix to the bottle.
The CDC recommends using hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol content. This recipe makes a sanitizer that slightly exceeds that alcohol content at 60.66%, so follow the proportions exactly. If you want a sanitizer with a higher alcohol percentage, decrease the amount of aloe vera to 1/4 cup.
Robert Hendrickson, medical director for the Oregon Poison Center at Oregon Health & Science University, says that while homemade hand sanitizer is effective if it is properly made, he says washing with soap and water is preferred in most cases.
Hendrickson cautions against storing homemade sanitizers in any container that someone could mistake for a beverage, such as an empty water bottle. Mistakenly drinking household products could make someone sick. Like all household chemicals, hand sanitizers should be kept out of reach of children.
Because alcohol has the potential to dry out skin, Hendrickson says it’s important for people to stop using any hand sanitizer if hands become irritated. For mild irritation, a skin moisturizer can be applied.
Of course, hand sanitizer is the second-best way to keep your digits germ-free. The No. 1 way, according to the CDC, is to properly wash your hands.
-- Grant Butler
503-221-8566; @grantbutler
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