Cancer survivor catches fire at hospital: Is hand sanitizer to blame?
An 11-year-old cancer survivor is now facing another recovery after she reportedly erupted in flames while at Doernbecher Children's Hospital in Portland, Ore.
In an incident unrelated to her cancer, Ireland Lane had hit her hit her head at school and passed out, according to The Oregonian. She was receiving care at the hospital when the front of her t-shirt burst into flames. As a result of her third-degree burns across her chest, arms and ear lobes, she will need multiple skin grafts and burn treatments. She is scheduled to receive her second skin graft on her 12th birthday on Thursday.
"She still has bad dreams, but she doesn't recall the actual incident, which from my perspective is very good," her father Steven Lane told The Oregonian.
Investigators believe a mix of flammable hand sanitizer and static electricity may have been the cause.
Ireland was diagnosed with a rare form of kidney cancer in 2007. She battled the cancer and beat it twice in five years. She recently moved from Tennessee -- where she was receiving treatment -- to Oregon, where she originally resided.
Her father told The Oregonian that he was sleeping in her hospital room when he woke up to see her running while on fire. He put out the flames with his own body. Ireland was transported to Legacy Oregon Burn Center, where they discovered burns from her belly button to her chin, on parts of her arms and the bottom of her ear lobes. She also singed her hair.
Steven claims that investigators told him that the only possible cause could be an alcohol-based hand sanitizer from a hospital dispenser. No one besides Ireland had seen the fire start, and investigators' first examinations showed no clear cause.
Ireland's father explained that his daughter had painted a wooden box for nurses and used the hand sanitizer to clean the table she had placed on the bed. He said that his daughter had also been playing in the bed, which could have caused static electricity.
"As readily available as hand sanitizer is nowadays, and how everybody sends it to school with their kids, it makes me much more worried," Steven said.
Rich Hoover, a spokesman for the Oregon State Fire Marshal's office, told NBC News that flammable sanitizer and a spark of static electricity "are definitely part of the investigation."
While it may seem strange, The Oregonian reported that similar cases happened in 1998, when a patient was burned in an operating room fire due to an alcohol-based antiseptic, and in 2002, in a case where a nurse's hand antiseptic burst into flames from a charge of static electricity.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that if water and soap are not available, people should use hand sanitizers with at least 60 percent alcohol. Doernbecher Children's Hospital's hand sanitizer is 61 percent alcohol, according to The Oregonian.
A spokesperson for 3M, the hand sanitizer's manufacturer, told the paper the product is "entirely safe" when used as directed.
"I've been in medicine going back 30 years now and never heard anything like this. And hopefully I never will again," Dr. Stacy Nicholson, assistant chief at Doernbecher Children's Hospital, said to KATU-TV.
