Kate
Not the first alert this Summer about the supposed significant fire risks associated with sanitising spray and one wonders whether the makers of liquid soap might be in cahoots!
So, here's one I drafted earlier in the mode of old fashioned cookery programmes.
I am not known as the greatest fan of America when it comes to health and safety but the man from NFPA puts it into very neat context.
Please forgive any formatting issues that I have missed following cut and paste.
First link followed another article in the same publication, involving a fire inside a car. Now if you put a car in a UK car park surrounded by mirrors and sunlight you could probably contrive to get the inside of the car up to about 45 degrees C, but it would be a good party trick (thought rather expensive if you burn out much of the inside of the car).
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8376027/Biker-set-fire-sprayed-sanitizer-coronavirus-check-point-India.html
Well, it’s obvious that the exhaust of a motorcycle is going to be very hot when it has been driven, particularly if in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.
But, if you look at the footage you can see that it’s actually quite a small fire.
Now, sanitising spray has been used with the formula largely unchanged for decades, particularly in healthcare.
In 2009, the World Health Organization published “WHO Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Health Care”, which is copyright protected and hence not reproduced here.
https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/70126/1/WHO_IER_PSP_2009.07_eng.pdf
This comments on the fire risk and recommends storage away from high temperatures and references:
http://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/tools/system_change/en/index.html
Although alcohol-based handrubs are flammable, the risk of fires associated with such products is very low.
The WHO Guidelines cite 766 healthcare facilities in the US which had accrued an estimated 1430 years of use of alcohol based handrub without a single fire attributed to a handrub dispenser.
A study in Germany found that 7 seven non severe fire incidents had been reported in 0.9% of hospitals over a period in which 35 million litres of sanitiser had been used over a period of over 25,000 hospital years,
equating to an incidence rate of 0.0000475% per hospital year. This is an extremely low risk!
In the German study, no reports of fire caused by static electricity or other factors were received, nor were any related to storage areas. Indeed, most reported incidents were associated with deliberate exposure to a naked flame, e.g. lighting a cigarette.
In the UK a summary of incidents relating to the use of alcohol based handrubs from the start of a cleanyourhands” campaign up to July 2008 identified only two fire events amongst 692 incidents reported in England and Wales.
http://www.npsa.nhs.uk/patientsafety/patientsafetyincident-data/quarterly-data-reports.
WHO has not considered it necessary to update its Guidelines in more than a decade since publication.
Here is what the US National Fire Prevention Association has to say:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P3GjIBKwI8&feature=youtu.be
In summary NFPA are much more concerned about the risk of Coronavirus than any fire risk associated with hand sanitiser until one starts to store in quantities of 5 Gallons or more.
There was an alert from NHS Property or similar that told people not to store any sanitiser in a car, which is not particularly bright if a District Nurse might want to carry a spare bottle in the boot.
That also said to keep out of direct sunlight just at the time when they were talking about having bottles of sanitiser on primary school desks (where presumably stored in containers to stop small children drinking it).
So some urban myths doing the rounds just when sanitiser might be a key Covid-19 precaution as lock down eases in various countries.