Kids Drinking Purell to Get High?

(MYFOX NATIONAL) - Kids seem to be constantly finding new ways of getting high -- sniffing glue, drinking cough syrup. But now kids are reportedly ingesting a popular flu season item.

Canadian Web site Macleans.ca is reporting that kids are drinking hand sanitizer gel to get a buzz. A 10th grader named Tyler told Macleans that he drinks it "like a shot" and that it tastes a little like "vodka and bug spray."

Hand sanitizers have alcohol content between 60 and 90 percent, which has apparently been the big draw for kids who are looking for a quick high. And many of them come in attractive "flavors" like strawberry, vanilla and coconut lime. But ingesting the sanitizer can cause alcohol poisoning fast. Heidi Kuhl, a health educator at the Central New York Poison Control Center, told Snopes.com , "Ingesting as little as an ounce or two of this product could be fatal to a toddler."

The American Association of Poison Control Centers reports that with the introduction of hand sanitizers in the marketplace, the number of reported exposures has steadily risen. In 2005 there were 9,500 cases and in 2006, there were nearly 12,000 cases.

A 2007 report in the New England Journal of Medicine highlighted the medical community's concern over the ingesting of hand sanitizers. The report mentioned a prison inmate in Maryland whose blood alcohol level was found to be 0.33 after drinking the sanitizer, which is four times the legal limit to drive in Maryland.

"The widespread use of hand sanitizer is fraught with a great deal of danger," said Suzanne Doyon, medical director of the Maryland Poison Center, who co-authored a letter in the journal about the case . "From an infection control perspective they are excellent. But there is this risk involved ... Someone who drinks it will behave like your pretty typical garden-variety drunk."

Some schools in Canada have taken steps to ban hand sanitizers altogether. Stateside the AAPCC said that as long as parents carefully monitor their kids' use of the product, hand sanitizers are perfectly safe to use. "H1N1 will cause far more illness this flu season than ethanol ingestion from hand sanitizers," said Jim Hirt, AAPCC Executive Director.