. . . WALANG NAMAMATAY SA DUMI

This is a forwarded e-mail from Jacqueline Dela Cruz, a former schoolmate and choirmate from MHS. Jacky now lives in Minatoku, Japan.

For Parents/Grandparents With Small Children~

Please re-post to make everyone aware of the dangers of hand
sanitizers with young children. Ok. I don't know where to begin
because the last 2 days of my life have been such a blur. Yesterday,
My youngest daughter Halle who is 4, was rushed to the emergency
room by her father for being severely lethargic and incoherent.
He was called to her school by the school secretary for being
"very VERY sick." He told me that when he arrived that Halle was
barely sitting in the chair. She couldn't hold her own head up
and when he looked into her eyes, she couldn't focus them.
He immediately called me after he scooped her up and rushed
her to the ER. When we got there, they ran blood test after blood
test and did x-rays, every test imaginable. Her white blood cell count
was normal, nothing was out of the ordinary.

The ER doctor told us that he had done everything that he could do
so he was sending her to Saint Francis for further test. Right when we
were leaving in the ambulance, her teacher had come to the ER and
after questioning Halle 's classmates, we found out that she had
licked hand sanitizer off her hand.

Hand sanitizer, of all things. But it makes sense. These days
they have all kinds of different scents and when you have a curious
child, they are going to put all kinds of things in their mouths. When
we arrived at Saint Francis, we told the ER doctor there to check her
blood alcohol level, which, yes we did get weird looks from it but
they did it. The results were her blood alcohol level was 85% and
this was 6 hours after we first took her. There's no telling what it
would have been if we would have tested it at the first ER.
Since then, her school and a few surrounding schools have
taken this out of the classrooms of all the lower grade classes but
what's to stop middle and high schoolers too? After doing research
off the internet, we have found out that it only takes 3 squirts of the
stuff to be fatal in a toddler. For her blood alcohol level to be so high
was to compare someone her size to drinking something 120 proof.

So please PLEASE don't disregard this because I don't ever want
anyone to go thru what my family and I have gone through.
Today was a little better but not much.

I did a personal research regarding this e-mail and I found out that
this letter was written by Lacey Butler of Oklahoma and published at
http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/sanitizer.asp. Although hand sanitizer is being endorsed to improve hand hygiene , consumers should be alert of the possible risks of using this product most especially in our homes. Hand sanitizers contain 63% v/v of isopropanol which is higher in alcohol content in vodka and it’s the same ingredient used in E-85 gasoline, making the product highly igneous too! Kaya mga parents don’t put hand sanitizers kung saan-saan especially kung mayroon tayong mga kids sa bahay..They can not understand the cautionary labels on hand sanitizers . Kids are basically explorative and inquisitive and may even try to lick and ingest it because of its eye-catching colors and sweet-smelling scents . If they lick up, or if they start drinking directly from the bottle they could get drunk." Gulping down about 200 millilitres of isopropanol can be deadly because it depresses the central nervous system and the heart!

Hand sanitizers are still safe for our children to use if used according to the directions and properly. Sa mga can afford , its a great alternative when they can't wash their hands with soap and water pero sa karamihan ng mga naghihirap sa atin, sabon at tubig lang. Ipangbibili na lang nila ang kanilang pera ng ilang kilong bigas kaysa ipambili ng hand sanitizer, katuwiran ng Pinoy wala naman daw namamatay sa dumi. . . (Ha! ha !ha! ha!)