You May Not Want to Leave Hand Sanitizer in Your Car This Summer

You may not want to leave your hand sanitizer in your vehicle this summer, according to an article in Car and Driver. Don't panic too much though.

For the past three months, during the coronavirus health crisis, we've been told over and over again to make sure we always have hand sanitizer with us, so we clean our hands on the go, until we can get somewhere to wash our hands with good old fashioned soap and water, to avoid getting this nasty virus. We've also been told that the hand sanitizer should be alcohol based in order to be the most effective. Well, now I'm reading that hand sanitizer could be dangerous, with a big emphasis on "could" if left in your car.

I wouldn't be telling you this if it was winter, but, because summer is quickly approaching and temperatures are going up, I thought you should know. Firefighters in Wisconsin put out a warning that hand sanitizer left in a hot car, could lead to trouble. The National Fire Protection Association said, "hand sanitizer's flash point is below 70 degrees Fahrenheit, which means a bottle of it doesn't need any external heat source to give off flammable vapors. All it would then need is a flame source—someone smoking in the car, for instance—for it to be in danger of explosion."

Like I said, don't panic. It's not very likely that your little hand sanitizer bottle will explode, but, firefighters still say that with the perfect storm of "concentrated bright sunlight and excessive heat on a bottle of hand sanitizer, it could happen."

So, I wouldn't worry about it too much, but, if you want to be extra safe you may want to throw your sanitizer in your handbag when you get out of the car. You may need it wherever you're going anyway.

To read the full article, click here.