03/04/2020
Hand sanitizer info🌻
We said not long ago we were done, so here's being done.
Sometimes, aromatherapy schools and companies give bad information. There are a lot of myths and misunderstandings that are perpetuated by these entities. And while often well-meaning, the failure to fix these issues leads to big issues among members of the essential oil communities taking unnecessary risks with their health.
Hand sanitizer in particular is a big area for this.
Hand sanitizer gel is not simple to make. And you can't swing it with just kitchen ingredients. Sorry. Hard truth.
Most DIY hand sanitizers recommend using an aloe gel (often not specifying if the base used should be just the pure leaf gel or what the aromatherapy community refers to as an aloe "jelly" - which contains polymers or other thickening agents). These particular recipes are relying on the essential oils that are added to kill the germs. Aloe itself does nothing for cleansing your hands. As a matter of fact, germs love aloe, so you're risking increasing your microbial overload instead of decreasing it if you've not made your product properly.
It gets even better when these recipes tell you that your poorly made product is good for a week to a few weeks. Shocker: they're not. Literally not. And you don't go and plan to kill germs with something that is on its way to spoiling in a matter of days. It makes zero sense to assume you're killing the microbes you need to with stuff that is going bad in that brief period of time. And it is a process of going bad. It's not good for 14 days and then magically spoiled on day 15. You've been having issues all the way along to that point.
Worse, the pure leaf gel is an aqueous product that does not and cannot solubilize essential oils. So, you get uneven distribution and even neat exposure on your skin (that's especially fun with hardcore germ blends that contain sensitizing EOs - not). That being said, using a polymer thickened jelly isn't good either. Now, the recipe we're going to share as our example here does mention potentially using a solubilizer if desired. But that doesn't make things better when a product isn't appropriately preserved.
And there's a big glaring reason why: these recipes aren't tested for squat in determining if potentially dangerous microbes are being killed on your hands. As a matter of fact, different microbes require different oils and different concentrations of different oils to effectively be gotten rid of, and the required levels often aren't great for your skin.
It can also take more time than you think for EOs do kill stuff. And when people use hand sanitizer, they are usually looking for a quick solution.
Finding any such recipe is concerning. But finding recipes where low concentrations of essential oils are being recommended (and even lower concentrations for children) to create a hand sanitizer in nothing but aloe - jelly or not - is concerning.
It's not sanitizing your hands. It's not sanitizing your children's hands.
You are making a bigger mess.
Think about it for a second. You're in the grocery store, and Tommy Toddler reaches out of the grocery cart or stroller and sticks his hands all over some leaky, raw chicken packages. You whip out your homemade "sanitizer", get it on his hands, rub it in, and go on your merry way thinking you've resolved the problem. Tommy's hands are in his mouth a minute later. A few days later, you've got food poisoning or stomach flu in your house and a super miserable kiddo. Or worse.
Aromatherapy schools, blogs, and companies alike need to STOP providing hand sanitizer recipes. It doesn't matter if they've used it and haven't gotten sick. None of them can prove that it's the recipe that really protected them, and we have every legitimate reason to believe that it really wasn't the recipe.
And what I personally find most disturbing about all this is the false (and sometimes deluded) sense of security that these shares instill in consumers. After all, these schools and companies are supposed to be reliable resources.
Unfortunately, sometimes they're not.
Every single day formulators and aromatherapists who know better are banging their heads against the wall due to the willful ignorance they see. People don't like to be confronted with the truth. Many place convenience, a fear of "chemicals," wanting to DIY everything, etc. over safety.
This is ironic given that a good portion of this bad, unsafe information is coming from resources that claim to value essential oil safety.
Btw, all this is also incredibly wasteful when it comes to valuable natural resources.
So, in the spirit of learning and not letting bad hide under the lens of good anymore, the link below is a share to a recipe that is NOT recommended due to major formulation issues.
Problems you'll find:
1) Potentially unsolubilized
2) No preservation
3) Inaccurate shelf life recommendation
4) Using the optionally recommended solubilizer lacks instruction on how to appropriately use it (you can't just add it to a bottle and shake)
5) Shaking doesn't adequately disperse EOs
6) Likely undiluted lemon exposure (phototoxicity risk) if non-thickened gel and no solubilizer is used.
7) VERY LIKELY untested for claims
8) Low concentrations (in particular for children) recommended to kill germs
As you can see, there are a lot of issues to be considered for one recipe.
Really, your best bet is to not try DIYing hand sanitizer, and esp. not the way is recommended on aromatherapy and essential oil blogs.
You're not sanitizing squat.
Again, let it be reiterated that this shared link is an example of what not to do. We are not recommending you go make this.
https://blog.aromahead.com/alcohol-free-hand-cleanser-nl
