Hand Sanitizer Question

[eatmeat4good]

I have a question about hand sanitizer.

There is sort of an ongoing dispute in my home.

I prefer hand washing with soap and water...the good old fashioned way.

My son constantly uses hand sanitizer.

The question has come up between us as to whether the sanitizer can get rid of gluten if there is gluten on your hands.

I told him gluten is not a germ and therefore, hand sanitizer will only move it around on your hands because it cannot kill it or eliminate it. If you don't rinse your hands, the gluten could still be there.

He thinks hand sanitizer does the job for everything.

I have read just today that gluten is soluble in alcohol. Does that mean it is destroyed by alcohol? Does soluble mean dissolved? Is it still there or not? Salt is soluble in water, but the water is still salty.

This may seem silly but I really think I need to know.

This weekend I got glutened some kind of way. I had handed a cookie to my nephew. Sanitized my hands with gluten free sanitizer. (we were away from water)

Munched on handfuls of nuts while the others ate lunch. Nuts I brought from home that had never made me sick.

Anyway, I got sick and now trying to backtrack so I wanted to pose this question to all of you experts.

What does hand sanitizer do to the gluten on your hands?

Nothing? Or does it eliminate it?

Thank you

[psawyer]

Soluble in alcohol means that it can travel in alcohol, but it is intact. Dissolved does not been destroyed. Alcohol has no effect on gluten. If it did, we could drink beer!

Hand sanitizer will ensure that your gluten is germ-free, but it will still be gluten.

[eatmeat4good]

Aha!

Thank you Peter!

That explains how I got glutened then!

So having gluten free hand sanitizer is really of no value if what you want off your hands is gluten.

Back to soap and water.

Thank you very much.

I rarely win arguments with my teen, but this one I did!

But not before I stupidly tested my theory first.

[K8ling]

Thanks for posting this!! Sean has been trying to use purell as a sub... it doesn't work but he didn't believe me til he read this!

[ravenwoodglass]

I agree hand sanitizer is useless for ridding your hands of gluten. Even a good rinse under the faucet will do a better job. I am not a big fan of those hand sanitizers as they seem to dry out the skin and too many use them instead of hand washing.