A 36-year-old Connecticut woman is making headlines this week for drunk driving, but how she became intoxicated is the big story. Jennifer Wilcox told a TV news reporter that she drank half a bottle of hand sanitizer before being tested to have a .17 blood alcohol level, over the legal limit.
Read the bizarre story and learn of a disturbing new trend in finding easy access to alcohol:
http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/article/278340/82/Woman-arrested-after-chugging-hand-sanitizer
According to the story, drinking a 2-ounce bottle of hand sanitizer—with a high concentration of alcohol—is equal to four shots of vodka. An expert reported that drinking hand sanitizer is on the rise nationally and that six youths were recently hospitalized for alcohol poisoning from the practice.
A story in the Middletown Press, where Wilcox was arrested, reported that the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence recommends parents buying the foam rather than gel form of sanitizer because it’s harder to extract the alcohol from it. It reported that the website www.ncadd.org says teens are distilling sanitizer to create 120-proof liquid.
With all the hand sanitizer PROs stock in restrooms and keep in their inventory, this could be a new source of liability for your company. Are you locking up your sanitizers in the storage closet? Has this trend become a concern to any of your customers, maybe school officials or municipal officials who have units placed in parks or soccer field complexes?
Share your thoughts right here, or send me an email at editor@promonthly.com and I promise to respond.
