Intertek offers accurate and comprehensive tests for hand sanitizer and disinfectant components and finished products.
With the emergence of COVID-19, governments around the world have established quality guidelines to ensure that the ingredients used in the preparation and distribution of hand sanitizers and disinfectants meets applicable safety requirements.
Intertek can help clients optimise raw materials selection and testing, as well as finished product testing, to ensure that safe, high-quality products reach global markets quickly.
Raw Materials Testing
Testing of the raw material components used in sanitizers and disinfectants helps manufacturers verify ingredients and screen for impurities to ensure the products are safe for use.
- Alcohol Testing (Ethanol Impurities): Ethanol impurities can be harmful or even toxic. Intertek offers gas chromatography testing for ethanol purity, including ethanol content (up to 98.8%), methanol content, and other impurities. Testing is offered to standards such as United States Pharmacopeia (USP), Federal Chemical Codex (FCC) testing, and many more.
- Gas Chromatography (GC) Analysis: The major components of alcohol-based hand sanitizers include alcohols that are quite volatile like ethanol, methanol, n-propanol and iso-propanol. Using GC, the volatile compounds of interest are primarily separated based on boiling point, and GC columns with polar selectivity provide additional intermolecular interaction (such as dipole interaction) to separate individual components based on polarity.
Finished Product Testing to Industry and Regulatory Standards
Intertek tests sanitizers and disinfectants as finished products, including third-party verification of:
- % IPA in finished product
- % ethanol in finished product
- Chemical characterization of packaging such as polymeric tubing, filters, etc.
Depending on where a product will be marketed, it is important to consider the applicable safety and quality standards for each region. Intertek can verify compliance to a variety of global standards, including:
- EU: Biocidal Products Regulation No 528/2012
- EN: Antibacterial Tests EN1040 and EN1276
- US: OTC Topical Antimicrobial Drug Products (21 CFR)
- Canada: Health Canada – Antiseptic Skin Cleansers Monograph
- Australia: Therapeutic Goods (Excluded Goods—Hand Sanitisers) Determination 2020
- New Zealand: Cosmetic Product Group Standard 2017 (HSR002552), Guideline on Regulation of Therapeutic Products
CONTACT US WITH A TESTING NEED
Regulatory & Advisory Support
Testing services are one part of Intertek’s end-to-end total quality assurance services - learn more about understanding regulatory approvals and supply chains on our global sanitizer and disinfectant solutions page.
Our global testing and advisory capabilities help customers around the world to quickly produce safe and effective sanitizers and get them to the frontlines where they are urgently needed.
