---
title: "Does Hand sanitiser expire? Degrades in quality"
description: "The alcohol evaporates. Below about 60 per cent it stops working, and you cannot tell by looking. What actually changes over time, whether it matters, and how to sto"
url: https://atoneplace.net/does-it-expire/hand-sanitiser/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Does Hand sanitiser expire?

**Does Hand sanitiser expire?: The alcohol evaporates. Below about 60 per cent it stops working, and you cannot tell by looking.**

2-3 years sealed, considerably less in a frequently opened bottle

Ethanol and isopropanol both evaporate readily, and every opening of the bottle lets a little vapour out. The effectiveness threshold is a concentration one — below roughly 60 per cent alcohol, sanitiser stops reliably inactivating most pathogens — so a bottle that has lost a third of its alcohol is not a third less effective, it is close to useless. A bottle carried loose in a bag in the heat loses alcohol fastest.

## How to store it

- Cap tightly. Keep it out of hot cars.

## How to tell it has gone

- A watery feel rather than the fast-evaporating one, or a much weaker smell.

> "Use by" and "best before" are legally different. Use-by is a safety date and should be respected; best-before is about quality, and food is usually fine well past it. Where the two diverge matters, the page above says which applies.

## Common questions

### Does Hand sanitiser expire?

The alcohol evaporates. Below about 60 per cent it stops working, and you cannot tell by looking.

### How long does Hand sanitiser last?

2-3 years sealed, considerably less in a frequently opened bottle

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## Sources

- US Food and Drug Administration — FDA (https://www.fda.gov/) [Public domain (US Government)]