NIST Lends a Hand to Hand-Sanitizer Manufacturers By William A. MacCrehan, a research chemist at NIST Like everyone on the planet, our organization, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), became concerned with the COVID-19 outbreak in March 2020. NIST scientists were anxious to provide any assistance they could to support COVID response efforts. As we were thinking of ways we could help, one of my colleagues, Walter Wilson, who often works closely with the local police department, got an unusual request: Could we analyze some samples of hand sanitizers to determine their safety? In these early days of the pandemic, people thought that using hand sanitizer might be one of the main ways of preventing the spread of COVID-19 infection. And as you may remember, there initially was a shortage of hand sanitizers, and local distilleries and other manufacturers were helping to fill the gap thanks to emergency interim guidance from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This guidance requires specific amounts of either ethanol, the kind of alcohol that people drink, or isopropanol, the kind of alcohol typically used to sterilize cuts, and limits the amount of 13 harmful impurities. Soon after, a flood of new products entered the marketplace. | 
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