YouTuber Reveals Whether Hand Sanitizers Create Superbugs

Could alcohol-based hand sanitizers pose a serious risk or is it just a myth?
Loukia Papadopoulos

In the COVID-19 era, we are using plenty of alcohol-based hand sanitizers. It cleans our hands of any potential virus and gives us an overall feeling of safety.

But could this use of hand sanitizers be dangerous? After all, we have all heard of superbugs who become immune at anything thrown at them. Could hand sanitizers create such superbugs?

The good people at SciShow are here to calm us and remind us that that's not the case. It turns out that bacteria can find ways to resist antibiotics because the latter use focused strategies to kill microbes.

Alcohol-based sanitizers are different, though, because they deal with a lot of things. They usually consist of isopropanol and ethanol, substances that rip cells open, and destroy what is inside.

Pretty powerful stuff, eh? How do isopropanol and ethanol manage to achieve such destruction? SciShow explains it much better than we ever could. So, we won't answer that here.

Instead, we will let you watch this video and find out all you can about alcohol-based sanitizers and superbugs. We will tell you you can and should be using hand sanitizer when needed.

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