Cruise ship hand sanitizer: Beware!

Hand sanitizer in the elevator on Norwegian Cruise Lines. Sue Frause photo.

A weird thing happened on a cruise ship. No, I didn’t get the Norovirus (also called the Norwalk virus), where outbreaks often occur on cruise ships. I developed peeling skin on my fingers/hands.

I first noticed it after a Caribbean cruise in February 2009. It was a music cruise, and the performers included Sarah McLachlan, Barenaked Ladies and the Great Big Sea. All Canadian artists, all music, all the time. It was fantastic! But one thing I wasn’t planning on, my peeling fingertips, showed up about half-way through the week-long cruise. I mentioned it to my friend and cabin mate, who suggested it might be a vitamin deficiency. I didn’t think anything of it and it disappeared quickly.

Fast forward six months later. Upon returning home from a week-long Alaska cruise in the summer of 2009, I noticed the familiar peeling fingertips and blisters forming on my hands. That’s when the light bulb went on. The two times I had this syndrome, I was on a cruise ship.

The common denominator on both cruises was the hand sanitizer. It was on the gangway leading to the ship, at the entrance to the dining rooms and on some ships, in the elevators.

It turns out that I developed contact dermatitis, a reaction to the type of hand sanitizer used on the ships. If you have sensitive skin, you may want to BYOS (bring your own sanitizer).