CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- The Mayor's office said never mind the expiration date, bottles of hand sanitizer being handed out by ward offices are still good. Mayor Lightfoot's administration said there's no need to worry about the effectiveness of hand sanitizer with expired dates that were given to city aldermen for distribution in their wards, because the products get checked regularly to make sure they still work.
The City of Chicago recently sent 240 bottles of Safetec brand hand sanitizer to ward offices, but the sanitizer was purchased in 2012 and had expiration dates from 2015.
Even so, Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady told the Tribune the bottles of sanitizer, which were part of the city's stockpile of emergency preparedness products, have been tested regularly to make sure they still work.
“Of all of the things to worry about, this is not one of them,” Arwady told the Tribune. “Hand sanitizer is actually one of the very easiest things to make sure that we can do the quality checks and the life-cycle testing to make sure that it remains appropriate for use. And that’s because, first of all, there’s like one active ingredient in hand sanitizer, and it’s alcohol. Alcohol is a natural preservative, and basically you know if a bottle of hand sanitizer is good, because you can look at the bottle and see if it’s full. If the bottle is full, that means the alcohol has not started to evaporate, and if the alcohol has not started to evaporate, then the alcohol solution is intact and alcohol is a natural preservative. There really are not concerns about it.”
Still, Arwady said she’s been fielding calls from City Council members seeking assurances about the hand sanitizer.
“I get it. People want to make sure the materials they’re using are appropriate and protected,” she said. “So yeah, we’ve been working to answer questions."
The Food and Drug Administration requires over-the-counter products such as hand sanitizers to list an expiration date “unless they have data showing that they are stable for more than three years,” according to the agency’s website.