Amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, hand sanitizer is becoming harder and harder to find in stores. Retired physician Dr. Sid Bondurant and his company, Medical Sparks Biologics, are offering an alcohol-free hand sanitizer known as DAB.
It would seem as if without isopropyl or phenethyl alcohol, there is not a way for germs to be killed. Well, that would be wrong. According to Bondurant, benzalkonium chloride kills off germs even more effectively than alcohol.
“Alcohol is very effective. It works right away—instantaneously—but the downside to that is if you go and touch something else with your fingers and it’s been more than a minute or two, then the protection from that alcohol is gone,” Bondurant said. “The nonalcoholic sanitizer, benzalkonium, I work with is very effective within seconds as well, but it has persistence to last for at least three to four hours.”
Strangely enough, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) only recommends the two alcohol-containing hand sanitizers, however, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the benzalkonium-based sanitizer.
When Bondurant and his team reached out to the CDC, the federal agency claimed that they have not seen enough evidence showing DAB is effective.
“We thought that was kind of mysterious,” Bondurant said. “We have published quite a few papers on it. I’ve written three. Two are in publication now, and they are available on the internet. The third one has been accepted for publication. It’s not available on the internet yet, but we have given the data to the CDC. The data shows that the hand sanitizer we studied was very effective in killing coronavirus in the laboratory.”
While DAB has proven effective in fighting germs, Bondurant made it clear that it is not an immunization.
“Let me make it clear that you cannot make a claim to prevent or treat any particular disease with a hand sanitizer,” Bondurant said. “It is a hand sanitizer. That is what it does. It does not treat or prevent any particular disease, but it is very effective in the laboratory of killing coronavirus.”
You can find Bondurant’s alcohol-free hand sanitizer on dabprotects.com, and you can also find the full interview with the retired doctor below.
