Daily Care Antibacterial Hand Sanitizer

Last Updated on August 16, 2020

EDITOR’S NOTES:

• You may wonder if Daily Care Antibacterial Hand Sanitizer is part of the FDA recall. As of August 1, 2020, the answer is no. You can find the full list on the FDA recall page.

Since the world changed in early 2020, hand sanitizer has been harder to come by. Major brands have had to work overtime to keep pace. Aldi sells its own brand of sanitizer, Source Invigorating Gel Advanced Hand Sanitizer, but it’s been mostly absent from store shelves lately. To plug the gap, Aldi brought in another brand, Clean N Fresh Instant Hand Sanitizer. Now Aldi has brought in still another option.

Daily Care Antibacterial Hand Sanitizer was listed in mid-July as an Aldi Find, which usually means it’s only in stores for a limited time. We saw it in early August, though, so I don’t know if this an item that will be restocked or not. At the time of this post, it cost $3.49 for an 11.8-ounce bottle, or about 29.5 cents an ounce. That is less than the Clean N Fresh Aldi sold earlier, but more than both the 12 cents an ounce I pay for Aldi hand sanitizer or the 16 cents an ounce that a bulk bottle of Purell runs at Target.

This sanitizer is manufactured by the Best Accessory Group, a bath, body, and cosmetics company based out of New York. The fine print says that the sanitizer is “designed in USA” and is made in China.

This sanitizer says it contains “alcohol,” but it doesn’t specify what kind. Typically most sanitizers use one of two kinds: ethyl alcohol (ethanol) or isopropyl alcohol (isopropanol). This bottle does not explicitly specify which one it is, but it is probably ethanol, since isopropyl alcohol must be at least 70% to be marketed for use in the United States, and this bottle says 65%. Another form of alcohol, methanol, is illegal in the U.S. to use in hand sanitizer.

The CDC recommends at least 60% for ethanol-based hand sanitizer, so this amount is above federal guidelines. That said, there is evidence that a few germs are more effectively killed by a 70% alcohol concentration. In the past, most major brands, including Purell and Germ-X, used a 70% formula, but I’ve also noticed in recent months that some of the national brands I’ve seen in-store have lowered their alcohol count, so the 65% is not unusual. Aldi’s Source Hand Sanitizer has a 70% alcohol percentage, but I haven’t seen it in stores in some time.

Besides ethanol, this sanitizer also contains:

• water
• acrylates/C10-30 akyl acrylate crosspolymer, a thickening agent
• aminomethyl propanol, a buffer solution used in cosmetics
• aloe barbadensis leaf extract, a skin moisturizer
• tocopheryl acetate, a form of Vitamin E that is an antioxidant

As far as gels go, it seems to work pretty well. It is thicker than both the Clean N Fresh and a bottle of Germ-X that I recently bought, and the smell is the typical clinical hand sanitizer smell I’m used to. It’s not particularly fragrant, but it seems to do the job.

The Verdict:

By all accounts, Daily Care Hand Sanitizer seems to be a competent hand sanitizer option. It is within the FDA parameters for effective hand sanitizer, and the thickness and smell are fine. It’s not the cheapest sanitizer out there, but it’s also not the most expensive, either. If a made-in-China sanitizer bothers you, you probably won’t want this; otherwise, if you’re short on some, this might be worth a look.