Hand sanitiser bad during pregnancy?

[georgarina]

Just had a mild freakout because with the pandemic I've been using hand sanitiser multiple times a day...and just read a study saying two ingredients in hand sanitiser (triclosan and something else) can disrupt baby's reproductive and brain development and contribute to smaller birth weight.

Anyone else heard of this?

It's in the hospital in the maternity department, and no midwives have said anything, so maybe not a huge or well-known thing (and the chemicals are in other products too), but I've been using it all the time so a bit nervous.

I would hope most people have been using hand sanitizers multiple times a day for a year now...
Perhaps it's harmful but what's the alternative?

If it was dangerous they wouldn't be making pregnant women use it on entry to the hospital.

You would be surprised how many everyday things we use all the time have toxic chemicals in them. It's nothing to worry about as it's very small amounts and if it did cause a problem lots and lots of things would be banned during pregnancy. Just focus on the list of stuff the nhs say to avoid (even some things on there rarely cause issue so it just shows that they are precautions with this). This is coming from somebody who has spent a lot of time researching this and detoxifying for other health reasons and I'm not avoiding hand sanitiser. In fact at work I got through tons of the stuff! X

You can honestly read a ‘study’ about anything that has some random unsubstantiated link to how it could damage your baby in some way.

Step away from it.

Most hand sanitiser is just alcohol gel and doesn't have triclosan in it.

Link to the study? There is so much false information out there

Well as someone who works in the NHS I can safely say I’ve never had an email to tell pregnant staff not to use the hand sanitiser, which we use a lot.

I am pregnant, anxious due to previous loss and under close consultant care. I have not heard this.

If you scour the Internet you'll find there are a lot of products that we use topically that are potentially harmful but the best thing is to just follow NHS advice in my opinion.

Also hand sanitizer, while obviously used a lot more since Covid came about, has been around for years so I think there would be more warnings if it were thought to be harmful.

But if you're worried OP just use it less. Some people use hand san when they could just wash their hands...

Hand sanitizer is only topical application (on the skin), with very/little systemic exposure (your blood stream - and therefore baby). Even if triclosan is bad for the developing baby, you won’t of actually exposed your baby to any of it by using it on your hands, unless you’ve been firing it straight into your blood stream or drinking it.

I was reading up on this a while ago out of interest as to whether the alcohol in it could get into your blood stream (yes I’m crazy and I know it), anyway they did a study and only the absolute tiniest amount was detected in the bloodstream and that’s after they had people rubbing into their hands something crazy like every 5 minutes! Not sure about the other chemicals but I would imagine it’s similar, you’d have to be bathing in it for any to get in your bloodstream I think!!