My daughter’s hands, especially the backs, look like the surface of the moon–the jagged part, not the dust. She’s 7. They use hand sanitizer (goop that you smear on and don’t wipe off) a lot at school. She’s allergic to latex, but nothing else that we know of. The only thing we can think of is that the sanatizer is trashing her hands. Does that make any sense?
Some of the sanitizers are alcohol based, and can dry your skin (at least, they dry mine). You might want to get her a small bottle of moisturizing lotion and tell her to rub a dot of it in after sanitizing.
A less messy alternative is chapstick – the clear moisturizer kind, in my experience, works as a pretty good “clean” hand lotion. Smear a bit on then rub it in.
The problem, of course, is that either solution may defeat the purpose of the sanitizer when kept in the pocket of a 7-year-old.
Typically hand sanitizers (although not all) have a moisturizer built in. I use them a great deal at work and my hands are significantly less dry when I use the hand sanitizer than my off days. So, it’s possible that it’s the hand sanitizers but she might also just have dry skin.
Ah, I might have to change brands (or rather, get the person I “borrow” from to change brands.) Perhaps the cheaper the sanitizer, the less likely to have moisturizer built in. And I’m guessing the schools use the cheapest available. Just speculating here–it’s also possible she has an allergy to something in the sanitizer, probably a perfume.
Can you (NoCoolUserName ) find out the brand easily?
Why on Earth are schools rubbing hand sanitiser over children’s hands? What’s wrong with soap and water? Talk about paving the way for an MRSA epidemic…
Indeed, if you think it’s the sanitizer, just tell her school to let her not use it for a month. (And, if you are me, be loud and annoying that they’re making all the kids use sanitzer in the first place.)
Use (or overuse) of alcohol hand sanitizer would not pave the way for any epidemic. It doesn’t create or promote any antibiotic resistance.
My first thought was an allergy to lanolin, though the Wikipedia page suggests that medical-grade lanolin doesn’t contain the allergenic ‘wool alcohols’ (?).
Alcohol-based sanitisers no, but there are very real concerns over sanitisers containing triclosan.
Regardless of moisturizer content, alcohol hand sanitizers dry out my hands. Is she prone to dry skin elsewhere? (eyelids, elbows, nose?)
I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, but I actually cannot find a hand sanitizer with triclosan or another antibiotic in it, although more and more soaps are having triclosan added to their formula.
So, I think they’re actually less likely to be encouraging resistant strains of bacteria with hand sanitizer than soap, although I think it’s equal if they use specifically non-antibacterial soaps.
Of course, there’s always the Hygiene Hypothesis. Hand sanitizer use may not create nasty resistant diseases, but it could lead to people with weaker immune systems and more allergies.
Bath & Body Works carried a gel hand sanitizer that contained triclosan…I haven’t looked in awhile, so I don’t know if they still have it or not.