How To make Your Own Covid-19 Hand Sanitizer

Some ideas on How To make Your Own Coronavirus Hand Sanitiser and also why you shouldn’t:

FREE DOWNLOAD: WHO-recommended Handrub Formulations (1025 downloads)

FROM HEALTHLINE:

What ingredients do you need?

Making your own hand sanitizer is easy to do and only requires a few ingredients:

isopropyl or rubbing alcohol (99 percent alcohol volume)
aloe vera gel
an essential oil, such as tea tree oil or lavender oil, or you can use lemon juice instead

The key to making an effective, germ-busting hand sanitizer is to stick to a 2:1 proportion of alcohol to aloe vera. This keeps the alcohol content around 60 percent. This is the minimum amount needed to kill most germs, according to the CDC.

How do you make your own hand sanitizer?

Jagdish Khubchandani, PhD, associate professor of health science at Ball State University, shared this hand sanitizing formula.

His hand sanitizer formula combines:

2 parts isopropyl alcohol or ethanol (91–99 percent alcohol)
1 part aloe vera gel
a few drops of clove, eucalyptus, peppermint, or other essential oil

If you’re making hand sanitizer at home, Khubchandani says to adhere to these tips:

Make the hand sanitizer in a clean space. Wipe down countertops with a diluted bleach solution beforehand.
Wash your hands thoroughly before making the hand sanitizer.
To mix, use a clean spoon and whisk. Wash these items thoroughly before using them.
Make sure the alcohol used for the hand sanitizer is not diluted.
Mix all the ingredients thoroughly until they’re well blended.
Don’t touch the mixture with your hands until it’s ready for use.

For a larger batch of hand sanitizer, the World Health Organization (WHO) has a formula for a hand sanitizer that uses:

isopropyl alcohol or ethanol
hydrogen peroxide
glycerol
sterile distilled or boiled cold water

Reasons to not make your own hand sanitizer – https://www.cnet.com/health/why-you-shouldnt-make-your-own-hand-sanitizer/

First, the Centers of Disease Control recommends washing your hands over using hand sanitizer, unless you don’t have access to soap and water. Second, the FDA has said that it knows people are making DIY hand sanitizer at home, but that it doesn’t have any “verifiable information on the methods being used to prepare such products and whether they are safe for use on human skin.”

Lastly, experts caution that making homemade hand sanitizer is harder than it seems. If you don’t get the concentration right, experts warn that you’ll end up with something that isn’t effective or is too harsh, and is a waste of ingredients.

The key is to get the right ratio of ingredients. The CDC Control recommends using a hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol, which store-bought hand sanitizers have. But trying to replicate that on your own can be tricky, Dr. Sally Bloomfield, with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine told the Guardian.

In the video below, Dr. Jason Kindrachuk, an assistant professor of Viral Pathogenesis at the University of Manitoba explains that you’re better off using soap than trying to make your own hand sanitizer.