several weeks After the Carson researchers released their report, the FDA reinstated pre-pandemic regulations on hand sanitizers. Officials said the relaxed rules were no longer appropriate now that supply has caught up with demand. From March 2022, manufacturers are prohibited from selling or donating disinfectants manufactured under this regulation, and must dispose of them in some way.
While the agency’s move has certainly reduced the number of contaminated sanitizer bottles on the market, it has also created new problems. Discarded sanitizers are to be separated from plastic bottles and disposed of as hazardous waste. One trade group, the National Chemical Distributors Association, has complained to the FDA that the process is “inefficient,” “expensive,” and “time-consuming.” The group also argued that “it costs more to dispose of the product than to give it away.” This claim does not acknowledge the numerous safety issues found in pandemic disinfectants.
Nonetheless, several school districts received donations worth tens of thousands of dollars in pandemic-regulated hand sanitizer last year. In June 2022, the FDA added pandemic hand sanitizer from Arizona-based brand Healing Solutions to its list of sanitizers that consumers should not use due to unspecified manufacturing issues. . Copa Health, a behavioral treatment center in Mesa, Arizona, donated $68,000 worth of Healing Solutions hand sanitizer to Mesa Public Schools, the state’s largest school district, according to donation records obtained by WIRED. bottom. After being asked for comment in October, the district sent letters to schools asking them to dispose of the bottles. “Mesa Public Schools was not informed by the FDA or providers that hand sanitizer is on the FDA’s prohibited list,” a school district spokesperson wrote in an email. When asked for comment, Copa Health marketing director Linda Torkelson wrote, “Thank you for contacting us, but we are not interested.” (Neither she nor other Copy Health executives responded to follow-up messages.)
Those working in the waste management industry said they routinely respond to calls from people trying to dispose of hand sanitizer. “The big jobs we talked about were prohibitively expensive, so they wouldn’t take us,” says Tony Orlando, president of a hazardous waste disposal company in California.
Over the past year, there have been multiple fires linked to mass, unsold hand sanitizers across the country, from Dallas to downtown Los Angeles. In Elgin, Illinois, a recalled box of hand sanitizer caught fire outside an abandoned building across from a high school. In August 2022, a temporary shelter-in-place order was issued in Wharton, Texas, after a fire broke out from what the local police department described as “a large amount of hand sanitizer.” Near the Brownsville, Texas, border, a warehouse storing recalled pallets of hand sanitizer caught fire earlier that month, and two more fires followed.
In the Oklahoma City suburbs, hand sanitizer fires occurred at factories and warehouses in August and October 2022. The facilities are said to be operated by developer Brannan Bordwine, which could face a $6.6 million fine for allegedly dumping and burying hand sanitizer on its premises. There were open pits and fires, one of which may have been intentionally set, fire marshals said. Baudwain did not respond to a request for comment. On April 3, 2023, firefighters in Moreno Valley, California, extinguished a fire that had started between hand sanitizer pallets that had been left outdoors for three weeks.
