Drunkards & Hand Sanitizer

From the Telegraph 20/06/11:

A man who drank six bottles of alcohol-based hand sanitiser while being treated in an Australian hospital for alcoholism has sparked calls for the antibacterial gels to be better secured.

Well, if alcoholics drink methylated spirits or whatever else they can get their trembling hands on, what’s so surprising about them drinking hand sanitizer?

Doctors said in a letter published on Sunday in the Medical Journal of Australia that they were stunned to discover the man had downed six 375-millilitre (12.7-ounce) bottles of hand sanitiser, giving him a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.271 per cent. That's more than five times higher than the 0.05 per cent legal limit for driving in Australia.

Dr. Michael Oldmeadow, an internist at The Alfred hospital in Melbourne city, said that although the incident was not the first of its kind, it was the most serious case he had seen and the man is lucky to have survived.

"It surprised us that he drank this stuff," Oldmeadow said, according to the Australian Associated Press. "It's horrendous. You'd think it would taste pretty bad."

Funnily enough, I’ve only recently jumped on the hand sanitizer bandwagon, and I have to say, it’s strangely addictive. (As a hand cleanser, I mean. Nothing more).

The stuff I’m using smells pretty damn good and whilst I don’t fancy drinking any, I do find myself squirting it about with increasing frequency. My mouse and laptop at work have even had a surreptitious squirt. 

Let’s hope I’m not developing any OCD tendencies. 

Right, blog post done, time to wash my hands.