If Your Hand Sanitizer Stinks, Here’s Why

When COVID-19 became a thing, I started carrying around a big jug of hand sanitizer. Under normal conditions, we are Purell people in my family, but as the world panicked and bought up all the Charmin and Purell, we've had to make some adjustments.

My wife was able to find some Equate hand sanitizer and Walmart. It was a pretty good-sized bottle, which is a nice thing to have when you're the designated one in your family to go in and out of the grocery store.

What wasn't nice was the stink that I started to notice when I'd get in my car. I didn't know what was going on. I thought maybe one of the kids left food underneath the backseat, but I found nothing.

I finally tracked it down to the hand sanitizer. It stunk! I took it out of my car yesterday, but it's a stubborn kind of a stink that isn't going to go away that easily.

It turns out, I'm not the only one that is having issues with Equate Moisturizing Hand Sanitizer. The company itself put out a statement acknowledging that there was an issue.

"In order to make more hand sanitizer available to the Equate shopper and their families during the national emergency, you will notice a change in the fragrance of the Equate hand sanitizer. This is a temporary fragrance."  -- Walmart

Digging a little deeper, people shared their unfiltered opinions about the stink in the reviews:

"The product has a rare smell," said Marisela. Well, that's a polite way to put it.

Rachel wrote, "It also has a very strong distinct smell that I can't even describe."

Andy was better able to pinpoint the smell: "I got two big bottles and they SMELL like fermented corn. Smell stays on your hands too."

Brian: " Do not buy... It smells like vomit. I literally cannot make anyone understand the smell of this."

Pamela: "Fast shipping, but smells like whiskey vomit. Everyone in my household agrees. It's bad."

BassetHounds: "They've changed the scent. It's close to a rotted carcass smell."

Review after review compared the smell to vomit, rotting carcasses, and wets mops. Page after page of reviews complaining of the smell, and all of the reviews from this month.

I feel like Equate needs to find a balance between rushing out the hand sanitizer for the public to buy and figuring out how to make it not smell like whiskey vomit.