A six-year-old girl cleans her hands with strawberry smelling hand sanitizer. A while later, the girl lays in a hospital bed dangerously drunk and unable to speak. These incidents are becoming more common amongst kids and teens across the US.

According to CNN, “3,266 hand sanitizer cases related to young children were reported to poison control centers in 2010. In 2014, the number increased to 16,117 cases.”

This increase is partly because hand sanitizer is so accessible. Kids and teens can easily buy this inexpensive product from just about any store. People often don’t realize the dangers that come along with it.

“I don’t think parents know how kids may get access and I don’t think students fully can appreciate the danger of what this can do to their developing brains,” Susan Odenthal, a nurse at GHS, said.

The amount of alcohol in hand sanitizer is much greater than the amount in alcoholic drinks.

“The amount of alcohol in hand sanitizer ranges from 45% to 95%,” wrote CNN. “By comparison, wine and beer contain about 12% and 5% alcohol.” This means that it is greater by about 40%

Think of how drunk an adult can get from alcoholic drinks, now picture it 40% worse.

Only a few squirts of hand sanitizer is enough to give a child the same symptoms of an intoxicated adult, including unresponsiveness, speech issues, dizziness, and in worse cases comas or possible brain damage.

Teenagers have even found ways to distill the hand sanitizer so that it is a more concentrated and higher dose, making something dangerous into something deadly.

YouTube videos can be found of teenagers ingesting alcohol treating it as a dare or challenge such as the cinnamon challenge or the chubby bunny challenge.

“Kids are pretty stupid sometimes,” said Annika Alworth, a freshman at GHS, when asked for her opinion on the topic.

Not all kids do it on purpose or because it’s a dare. Some little kids (ranging anywhere from 6-12 years old) say they ingest it because it smells good or looks pretty. The children often end up drunk and in a hospital.

“A kid is not thinking this is bad for them,” Dr. Gaylord Lopez said in an interview with CNN. “A lot of the more attractive (hand sanitizers) are the ones that are scented. There are strawberry, grape, orange-flavored hand sanitizers that are very appealing to kids.”