Majority of people don’t like to be sick, why would we? One of the best ways to keep germs away is to keep our hands clean. Yet, does it actually work? Lots of people around the world use a germ killing sterilizer called, hand sanitizer. For many people, this is their go-to option for keeping our grimey hands clean, but in recent studies hand sanitizer has proven more harmful than beneficial.

On the bottle of hand sanitizer it may say, “kills 99.9% of germs”, but it also kills the good bacteria that is supposed to fight off harmful germs and diseases. The more we use hand sanitizer, the worse our immune systems get.

Hand sanitizer also increases high amounts of BPA. For all those who don’t know, BPA is a harmful chemical that imitates our hormones and is linked to all kinds of hormone disorders, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and Infertilization. Objects such as tupperware containers and bottles of cleaning products all contain high amounts of BPA. The University of Missouri did a study that took receipt paper, which contains very high amount of BPA, and tried to see if an there was more amounts of BPA transferred to the hands of those who used hand sanitizer prior compared to someone who didn’t use hand sanitizer at all. The results showed that when hand sanitizer was used before touching the receipt paper, higher amounts of BPA was transferred.

Hand sanitizer is a $200 million, soon to be $400 million industry according to the marketing research firm Global Industry Analysts of California. After we use up the plastic bottles, we have millions upon millions of plastic bottles adding to the billions of tons of plastic waste polluting our planet that are also extremely flammable (Ruth Schuster).

To sum it up, hand sanitizer is bad and because currently no cure or assistance for reducing BPA is available, the only real answer is to stop using hand sanitizer all together, which will also reduce the pollution in the water and risks of alcohol fires.