Hand sanitizer is reportedly becoming a new trend for teens to get drunk

There’s been a new trend going around and it includes teenagers and hand sanitizer.

Hand sanitizer trend?

As many as six California teenagers were hospitalized with alcohol poisoning last month. Two last weekend alone, from doing the unimaginable drinking hand sanitizer.

In a report by ABC News, hand sanitizer is the latest in a string of household products to induce intoxication. A few squirts of hand sanitizer could equal a couple of shots of hard liquor. California has a reported 2,600 cases since 2010, and it’s becoming a national issue.

“This is a rapidly emerging trend,” Dr. Cyrus Rangan, medical toxicology consultant for Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, said in a news conference today.

Helen Arbogast, an injury prevention coordinator at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, told ABC News that, “Since 2009 we can see on YouTube it’s in all regions of the country. We see it in the South, in the Midwest, in the East.”

Why it’s harmful

Liquid hand sanitizer is 62 to 65 percent ethyl alcohol, or ethanol, the main ingredient in beer, wine and spirits, making it 120-proof. Compared, a bottle of vodka is 80-proof, it shows the dangers it can hold.

Doctors say ingesting sanitizer can produce the same side effects of consuming large amounts of alcohol.

”We get worried about children getting into these, but it is different from an adolescent who is trying to drink half a bottle to get drunk.”