During the height of the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration lifted regulations on the manufacture of hand sanitizer, putting its faith in the free market to solve a shortage of hand sanitizer.
The response was better than expected – much better. After production soared, the U.S. had a massive surplus of hand sanitizer.
Products that remained unsold after the pandemic subsided accumulated at sites across the nation. Consequently, industrial fires involving large amounts of hand sanitizer occurred at multiple sites in Texas, Illinois, Oklahoma and California.
An Interstate 10 Freeway fire in Los Angeles on Nov. 11, 2023, was the third in that area involving leftover hand sanitizer. A parking lot in downtown L.A. where pallets of sanitizer were being stored erupted in flames in January 2023. And in 2021, a noxious smell plaguing the Los Angeles County town of Carson was linked by officials to a massive fire at a lot where thousands of bottles of hand sanitizer were stored.
A clear bottle of sanitizer left on a car’s dashboard sparked a fire in Waukegan, Ill., in 2020. And the fire department in Elgin, Illinois, spent several hours in 2022 extinguishing a fire that started in “a large number of boxes” of hand sanitizer stored outside a building.
In Brownsville, Texas, firefighters responded to a fire on Aug. 19, 2022, at a warehouse where pallets of hand sanitizer were stored, and officials reported that two more fires reignited afterward. Some of the sanitizer stored there had been recalled, officials said.
It was unknown how much sanitizer remained in Fort Worth, Texas, after a fire which broke out there the night of Oct. 6, 2022, in a commercial warehouse filled with pallets of the alcohol-based product, and burned for more than a week. Firefighters were still on the scene 11 days later.
Some of the unsold hand sanitizer in the U.S. was found to be toxic because of poor manufacturing practices.
Most, if not all, of the hand sanitizer that Brannan Bordwine of Chickasha stored at three locations in Grady County for Latitude Liquids was destroyed in multiple fires between August 2022 and July 2023.
The sanitizer had been yanked from store shelves across the country after it was discovered that the product was manufactured in Mexico using methanol, not ethanol (which is also known as ethyl alcohol or grain alcohol). Methanol is a toxic alcohol that is used industrially as a solvent, pesticide, and an alternative fuel source, and is potentially lethal if ingested.
Bordwine had been storing the product in accordance with a joint venture agreement with Latitude Liquids of Arkansas. Latitude Liquids received the tainted sanitizer under a contract with 4e Brands Northamerica LLC, which filed for bankruptcy in February 2022.