the.com/sanitizer
the bottle that turned panic into a global handshake replacement overnight
means A substance, usually an alcohol-based gel or liquid, that kills or reduces germs on the skin or surfaces without needing soap and water.
from From 'sanitize' plus the agent suffix '-er.' 'Sanitize' comes from 'sanitary,' which traces back to Latin 'sanitas' meaning 'health,' from 'sanus,' 'healthy' — the same root that gives us 'sane' and 'sanatorium.' So a sanitizer is, quite literally, a thing that makes healthy. The word itself is fairly modern, an early-20th-century formation, but it stayed clinical and unglamorous for decades before pandemics gave it star billing.
- invented
- Lupe Hernandez patented gel version as a nurse in 1966
- alcohol math
- needs 60 percent minimum to actually kill germs
- flammable
- high alcohol content makes it genuinely catch fire
- useless against
- norovirus and C diff shrug it off entirely
- 2020 gold
- distilleries pivoted from spirits to sanitizer overnight
purell hand sanitizer — 35% of us hand sanitizer market share, launched 1997
lysol disinfectant spray — epa-registered to kill 99.9% of viruses, peak demand march 2020
dettol antiseptic liquid — dominant in india and uk, founded 1933 in britain