# 3758
Note: I don’t usually rant in this blog, but today, I make an exception.
While it may not bode particularly well for our species, Charles Darwin was on to something when he observed that adaptation is an important characteristic for any organism’s survival.
Which brings us to an article I found today about the `dangers’ of hand sanitizers in schools, and the fears that some parents and officials have over their fire hazard and potential abuse.
A brief excerpt from a much longer article follows:
Hand sanitizers a new schoolroom staple, but ingredients stir controversy
Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah
September 20, 2009 5:14 AM
MCT NEWSFEATURES
Chicago Tribune
(MCT)
CHICAGO - Some kindergartners call it ''the magic soap,'' and in schools across the country hand sanitizers are quickly emerging as the weapon of choice against swine flu.
School districts are installing wall dispensers in classrooms. Teachers are squirting the gel into not-so-clean palms before lunch or after a visit to the bathroom. In some districts, parents had to buy hand sanitizer along with paper and pencils as part of their kids' back-to-school supplies.
But a wrinkle has emerged in the world of the squirt happy: Hand sanitizers have a fairly high alcohol content. That has some officials worried about flammability and potential misuse as an intoxicant.
In Kane County, Ill., students can't use hand sanitizers in school except under adult supervision. The county regional office of education requires school districts to have a formal plan for how they'll dispense the germ-fighting product in classrooms and lunchrooms, and they must store larger pump containers and extra bottles in fireproof cabinets or outdoor sheds like other flammable products.
Stop the presses!
Alcohol based hand gel burns when touched off with a lighter or match.
As does a crumpled ball of paper . . . (see photo below).
Bad news, I would venture, for the American pulp & paper industry should that news ever leak to the papers. Schools, I understand, are absolutely lousy with paper.
(Hand gel & paper burning side-by-side)
Not to be unkind, but isn’t this isn’t carrying the `obsessive parental worrying thing’ just a little too far?
Parents can (and should) be teaching their young children not to arbitrarily set fires, and that glycerin and propylene glycol are inferior mixers for alcoholic beverages. Lessons that will serve them well their entire lives.
This is 2009, after all.
Kids should be smart enough to know that the best libations can be found in their parents liquor cabinet, not their medicine cabinet.
Granted I grew up in the 1950s, back before every kid had a cell phone umbilical cord to stay connected to a supervising adult.
Kids as young as 6 years of age would leave the house after breakfast rarely to be heard from again until supper time. If they came home for lunch, fine, otherwise they’d get a sandwich at a neighbor’s house.
It was a time when a 12-year-old was considered old enough to babysit. Today, that would probably result in a visit from Children’s Services.
Eight year-olds had BB guns, sharp sticks, pocket knives (necessary for sharpening sticks) and kid-engineered forts in the woods to play in.
We drank water from garden hoses, climbed trees, and while aloft would sometimes eat the unwashed fruit hanging about. We learned the hard way the perils of landing on our knees on the sidewalk, and soon learned that the metal slide at the school playground would scald your backside on a hot summer’s day.
And yet - amazingly, most of us survived to adulthood.
It’s not that I’m arguing that we should go back to the `bad old days’; when kids rode bikes without helmets, no one wore seatbelts (and kid carrier seats for cars didn’t exist!), everyone smoked, and schools would hand out mercury to kids to play with (watch it roll around in your hands, kids . .it’s liquid metal!).
Obviously, we’ve made some rational decisions along the way.
But if we’ve really raised a generation of school aged kids incapable of using hand sanitizer without A) getting drunk off of it or B) setting the school house on fire . . . .
. . . . we’ve got bigger problems as a society than a flu pandemic to deal with.
