Hi friend,

We'd like to share some info we found very interesting- hope it's useful for you too!

The FDA regulates the word "sanitizer" as well as statements about how many germs a product kills. A product can ONLY be called a hand "sanitizer" if it contains alcohol or a number of synthetic antibacterials like Triclosan or benzalkonium chloride (BTW, Thyme oil is not one of the FDA approved options).

So, if you want an alcohol free product, READ your ingredient list on the bottle. If you happen to have a hand sanitizer with only a "patented formula" that does not list what's in that formula.... hmmm, I'd suggest looking up the patent and seeing what's in there. Either it's got to have alcohol or they are mislabeling.

Hi friend,

When we sat down with our chemists, we found out that alcohol sanitizers kill everything... good germs, bad germs and with excessive use can cause defatting of the skin (whaaaat? Basically it can prematurely age your skin if you're using it alot, sounds lovely). Some companies add extra ingredients like aloe, but when you're bottle contains 60 - 70% alcohol (the standard % range)... well, you get the picture.

I know a lot of people are looking for natural ingredients to address the H1N1 (swine) flu, so it was interesting to read this news...
The Department of Microbiological and Gynecological Sciences at the University of Catania, Italy, let the world in on their recent results testing Melaleuca alternifolia essential oil (tea tree oil, or TTO) on H1N1 virus. It's a technical publication, but here's a bit from their abstract:

TTO and some of its components (the terpinen-4-ol, the terpinolene, the alpha-terpineol) have an inhibitory effect on influenza A/PR/8 virus subtype H1N1 replication at doses below the cytotoxic dose.

That last bit seems to support that tea tree oil inhibits the virus at concentrations that don't hurt your own cells.