At some point last year, amidst the coronavirus pandemic, people began Googling a curious question: Why does hand sanitizer smell bad?
What those poor souls learned was that an initial shortage of ethyl alcohol hand sanitizer gave way to a glut of foul-smelling goo. As brands rushed to meet consumer demand, they reportedly used cheaper ethanol that isn’t purified of contaminants. That shortcut often makes the final product smell terrible.
So naturally, some companies did something arguably worse: they added fragrance. Masking a noxious odor with a cloying scent might make many consumers happy. It’s a fix that also theoretically addresses complaints that sanitizer smells too much like hard liquor, a grievance that’s still alive and well on Twitter. This particular frustration does have higher stakes for people in recovery from alcohol misuse, who may find the strong aroma of ethanol tempting. But those who welcome masking fragrances are blessed with a gift that others don’t possess. They can walk up to the hand sanitizer pump at the grocery story and squeeze a blob of the stuff into their palm without worry.
Those of us who are sensitive to scents — a group that comprises nearly one third of the public, according to studies and surveys — face a different reality. Perfumed sanitizer can lead to symptoms like shortness of breath, watery eyes, headaches, stomachaches, and temporary yet all-too-real malaise. When sanitizer clings aggressively to the hands, the scent lingers for hours. No amount of scrubbing with soap extinguishes the smell.
Imagine trying to focus or relax while experiencing the equivalent of a constant poke in the eye. Without relief, the effect can increase irritability, frustration, and anxiety. This might seem dramatic, but try counting how many times your hands come close to your nose or mouth in an hour or a day. That’s dozens, if not hundreds, of little tormenting moments.
Some might argue that the onus is on the scent-sensitive to bring their preferred hand sanitizer with them everywhere, one that doesn’t list “fragrance” as a mysterious ingredient. But this isn’t always possible, whether because your favorite alcohol spray leaked all its contents into your purse or because you accidentally left the house without sanitizer and found yourself at a donut shop with a hungry kid. I can assure you that eating a Boston Cream donut is significantly less enjoyable when your hands reek of fragrance that chokes the airways.
At the very least, businesses could clearly label hand sanitizer as scented. Most people want to stop the surface transmission of nasty germs, but become less eager to sanitize when it means gambling their well-being. Improved labeling aside, there is a case for the universal use of unscented hand sanitizer where it’s provided to the public.
The real problem is that companies need to mask horrible odors in their products because they don’t decontaminate the ethanol. That shouldn’t be remedied by fragrance, which some consumers might endorse as a perk of slathering their hands in sanitizer but others experience as mild torture. The companies that make the utilitarian product (compared to the stuff that lines the shelves of Bath & Body Works) should just forgo perfumes at their cost, rather than make consumers pay in discomfort.
When I asked Pamela Dalton, Ph.D., a faculty member at the Monell Center, a nonprofit scientific institute that studies taste and smell, about severe reactions to scented hand sanitizer, she said that experts suspect it’s all about individual experience.
Based on the available evidence, it seems that scents prompt a psychogenic response from people who are primed to have one. In other words, the chemical compounds that create an odor don’t necessarily have a direct effect on the body itself. (Exceptions may arise when a chemical causes a skin rash, for example.) Instead, some people’s brains process a smell and a set of little-understood personality traits, like heightened sensory perception or environmental vigilance, can somehow produce uncomfortable physical symptoms like migraines, nausea, and dizziness. For whatever reason, the body and brain aren’t at all happy to be around the odor.
“I would never argue that those symptoms aren’t real, it’s just that they’re not a direct effect of that material, that aroma, that chemical on an organ in your body,” said Dalton.
Dalton also said that when odor masking isn’t done with precision, it’s possible to actually “synergize” the scent so that it becomes even more repulsive. Moreover, efforts to mask offensive smells, say at landfills or sewage plants, aren’t science-based, according to Dalton. Instead, marketing companies come up with a compound they promise buyers will conceal stench. In the end, it may not be capable of reducing the quality of intensity of the malodor. Surely, everyone can recall a time when they encountered cherry- or rose-scented stink. Such is the case with the worst offenders in the hand sanitizer category. These bunch smell a little like alcohol, a little like organic waste, and what could be charitably described as floral urinal cake.
“I would never argue that those symptoms aren’t real”
For those who favor fragranced sanitizer, the fact that people’s negative reactions are psychogenic might seem like an argument against making scent-free versions the norm. After all, it’s unlikely that a visceral physical reaction is caused by something serious like poisoning. (It’s worth noting that the Food and Drug Administration has found “unacceptable levels” of dangerous contaminants like benzene and methanol in some sanitizers.)
What skeptics need to understand is that the scent-sensitive have no control over which sanitizer will unleash that special brand of perfumed misery. In general, they can avoid products they know are triggers, but things like dryer sheets and air fresheners are optional household items. Hand sanitizer meant for public use at grocery and retail stores, sporting events, and schools is far more essential.
There’s also little recourse for the affected besides relentlessly scrubbing until the aroma fades. Dalton said dunking sanitizer-skunked hands in vinegar might do the trick, but because products don’t list the chemicals that make up their fragrances, it’s hard to know what will coax the offending molecules from someone’s skin. One famous example of this is how water won’t disrupt the chemical compound of spicy chiles, but the fatty acids in milk will get the desired, cooling result.
Some people happily sanitize their hands and never catch a whiff of offensive odors. Lucky them. Making an unscented version the universal public option would give relief to people whose brains and bodies revolt when exposed to scented sanitizers. They’d like to live their life unworried about how a squirt of hand sanitizer could ruin their day, too.