"75 not 60" Hand Sanitizer Spray
Plainspeak:
Spray this on your hands and/or surfaces to kill germs.
Scientific advantages:
Concentration- We use the current WHO-recommended concentration of 75.15% isopropyl alcohol. The FDA requires at least 60% alcohol in hand sanitizer, although there's evidence that 75% is better, against "coronaviruses specifically." The CDC doesn't recommend using products in which the active agent is less than 70% isopropanol, although most of the products on the market continue to operate in the 'grey area' of 60-70%.
No glycerin- The sanitizer market is saturated with products containing glycerin...the earliest evidence I found that this could be a problem was 2013, and the most compelling evidence I found was from 2019. The data is quite interesting and quite incomplete (as pointed out in the 2019 study), so as we wait for more science to come in, as an industry, let's take a proactive approach and switch to MCT oil, it's 100% caprylic/capric acid and should actually increase antimicrobial efficacy, instead of decreasing it.
Format- It's a spray. There's compelling science indicating that a liquid is a superior format for sanitization, yet people generally prefer foam or gel because they feel cleaner. More on this below in the Science section
Additional antimicrobial and antiviral compounds: Lavender, Tea Tree, Rosemary, Frankincense
Most components of essential oils are small enough to easily pass through cell membranes, leading to some unusually powerful antimicrobial and antiviral traits. Because essential oils are complex chemical compositions, they often act in multiple steps of the viral/and/or/bacterial life cycle, which brings an added benefit: protection against viral development of resistance or immunity.
Here's a thorough look at the general biology of oils interfacing with influenza.
More information on each individual oil below in the Science section.
FORMULATION- What are thou really tho
Isopropyl Alcohol=75.15%
Reverse Osmosis Water=22.39% EarthFare
MCT Oil=1.45%
Essential Oil Concentration: 1.01%
Lavender*=0.63%
Tea Tree*=0.23%
Rosemary*=0.09%
CO2 Frankincense=0.06%
*organic
SOURCING - Extra Emphasis
Souring is always a focus, but it's even more important with sanitizers. The FDA might be slow on updating to a 70% alcohol requirement, but let's give them points for how they reacted to the burst of bad sanitizers on the market, banning over 160.
Isopropyl Alcohol (United States) - Florida Laboratories
Reverse Osmosis Water - Earthfare
MCT Oil (Singapore) - Mountian Rose Herbs
Lavender (Bulgaria) - Eden Botanicals
Tea Tree(Australia) - Eden Botanicals
Rosemary (Spain) - Eden Botanicals
CO2 Frankincense (India) - Eden Botanicals
Product Story
Originally, this space was occupied by a long-form recounting of one very memorable dream. I respect Yung, but I respect readers time even more, so here's as brief a form as I can muster
One night in June 2020 I had the following dream:
It was the future. I had built Asheville Holistic into a big company, a company with many products but only one successful one: a sanitizer spray.
This was quite peculiar given I had never made a sanitizer spray and knew nearly nothing about them. But still, I was gripped with something that felt like optimism and I was determined to spend the entire day doing research and come out of it with a formulation. After about 4 hours of research, I felt I was very close to having a final formulation, but after another 4 hours I was breaking through the Dunning-Kruger effect and realizing how little I actually knew. Completely exhausted, I went to the grocery store and standing right in the entrance was a massive rack of sanitizer sprays. I walked over pretty cocky, but my confidence quickly dovetailed. More than a dozen brands, all with almost identical formulation, all selling for cheaper than I would be able to. The pandemic had been going on for months, the market was completely saturated...Why was I trying to make a hand sanitizer because I saw it in a dream? What a stupid idea. Optimism is a fool's hope.
But then I ate, and slept. And got back to work.
The answer was, of course, deeper in the science. Of course, of course those companies arent using enough alcohol, of course they're copycatting each other's inferior formulations and avoiding customer education. It turns out sanitizer is not that different from skincare after all.
NOTES FOR USE
1. Make sure you use enough "sufficient volume of sanitizer is necessary to ensure complete hand coverage" so that viral threats can be developed.