Researchers from Trinity College Dublin have looked at the environmental impact of hand sanitisers, due to their increased production amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

The research team said that all forms of hand-washing can have an impact on the environment. However, the study suggests that certain alcohol-based sanitising gels are better for the environment overall than other hand washing methods such as using soap and water.

The study, published in the journal Environmental Science and Pollution Research, noted that the use of these gels increased greatly over the last two years. The World Health Organisation has recommended frequent hand washing with either soap and water or alcohol sanitiser, as it is shown to provide protection against Covid-19.

To test the impact these forms of hand washing can have on the environment, the researchers modelled the impacts of the UK population adopting four different hand washing practices over the course of a year.

These practices were ethanol-based sanitising gel, isopropanol-based gel, liquid soap with water and bars of soap with water. The impact of these methods were rated under 16 categories such as climate change, freshwater ecotoxicity, ozone layer depletion and water use.

The results showed that isopropanol-based sanitising gel had the lowest impact in 14 out of the 16 categories. In the climate change category, these gels had an impact four times lower than liquid soap hand washing.

“Isopropanol performed better across nearly all measurements compared with ethanol, except for fossil fuel use,” the study said. “When the results were normalised, fossil fuel use was found to be the least important of the 16 impact categories measured in this LCA (Life Cycle Assessment).”

According to the study’s disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) impact analysis, using isopropanol-based sanitising gels can cause a per person loss of 16 hours of life, compared to 114 hours using the liquid soap and hand-washing approach.

First author of the journal, Dr Brett Duane, said hand hygiene has made a “big difference” in slowing Covid-19 transmission over the past two years, but that increased hand washing practices “do cause significant harm”.

“Importantly, the work shows that sanitising gels cause less harm than soap-and-water practices, with isopropanol-based gels in particular leaving a relatively lower impact,” Duane said.

“That is useful information for reducing further damage but the work also underlines the need for new gels that are more environmentally friendly.”

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