Unsanitary hand sanitizer at Beijing airport can cause sepsis: report
October 6, 2013 Leave a comment
Unsanitary hand sanitizer at Beijing airport can cause sepsis: report
Staff Reporter
2013-10-05
Hand sanitizers provided in China’s public places can be anything but sanitary and people with cuts on their hands who use them can risk infection even leading to potentially fatal cases of sepsis, the Nanjing-based Yangtse Evening Post reports. The state-run CCTV in a recent “Is it true?” program said the hand sanitizers provided in some public places exceeded acceptable levels of bacteria by 600 times, the paper said. Mr Xia, from in Yinchuan, the capital of the northeastern Ningxia Hui autonomous region, said he recently used hand sanitizer at a local restaurant and felt an itching sensation. He immediately washed his hands with clean water for more than 10 minutes until the itching eased.The numbers of bacteria in hand sanitizers should be less than 1,000 per gram, according to regulations. A CCTV reporter collected hand sanitizers from several public places in Beijing and sent them for tests, finding that KFC’s Xidan branch, Peking duck restaurant Quanjude’s Wangfujing branch as well as several five-star hotels and several movie theaters, all passed the test with levels of fewer than 10 bacteria per gram, while several restaurants exceeded standards by 30%-90%,
At Terminal 2 of Beijing Capital International Airport, however, CCTV found hand sanitizers contained some 600,000 bacteria per gram, or 600 times the national standard.
Using such unsanitary sanitizer will easily cause pus to develop if one has open wounds, and once the bacteria enter the blood they could cause sepsis or other life-threatening conditions, said Li Tao, deputy director of the environmental division under the Center for Disease Control.
A reporter from the Yangtse Evening News conducted a separate investigation in Nanjing, finding that shopping malls, restaurants and office buildings do not provide sanitary conditions for customers and staff to wash their hands.
Most public places use cheap hand sanitizers that do not meet national standards, the report said. Some places even bought cheaper sanitizers and transferred them into empty containers of quality brands, it said. A bottle of hand sanitizer of a reputed brand typically costs more than 10 yuan (US$1.60), considered too expensive by most managers who oversee public places.
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