Did police warn about Fentanyl overdose from shopping cart handles? Fact Check

A warning urges readers to use hand wipes on shopping carts in places such as Wal-Mart because of the risk of contact with the drug Fentanyl that – according to many variants of the warning – can cause death with “one drop”.

Some examples of the warning can be read below –

You know when you go to Wal-Mart and the grocery store and they have the wipes to clean your cart handle? How many of you don’t use them? Well, was told that the police also suggests you do it because of all the problems with drugs, if someone has Fentynyl still on their hands and they touch that cart they transfer it to the cart, then you get it on you, one drop can cause death. Scary but worth taking the time to clean the handle. Plus, One dr told me to use the sanitizing wipes because of hepatitis.
All you have to do is rub your nose or touch your child’s mouth. Copy and post. I did.
This is a scary truth.
Beware out there. I ALWAYS WIPE BEFORE I USE!!!

And

You know when you go to Wal-Mart and they have the wipes to clean your cart handle? Well, I use them and always thought of the germs only. I read today that the police chief also suggests you do it also because of the dangerous side effects of drugs nowadays.

If someone has Fentanyl still on their hands and they touch the cart you are touching, it can get into your system. Scary but worth taking the time to clean the handle.

All you’d have to do to get it into your system is rub your nose or a mother touch her child’s mouth. I never even considered this happening but here in the tri-state area there have been officers exposed and even children exposed to the residue from the powder.

TLDR: Fentanyl is a very real and dangerous opioid, that can cause death if consumed in even small quantities, and one police department really did offer a social media warning about wiping shopping carts in a bid to avoid the drug.

However, the advice in this warning is overly alarmist. The DEA and CDC have walked back their stance that Fentanyl is likely to be significantly harmful when someone comes into contact with its powder form in the way described in this warning (i.e. through incidental skin contact) and the police department that made the social media warning later removed it, not only because the advice was spurious, but because using certain wipes could actually increase the chance of harmful side effects from Fentanyl.

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In 2017, the Leachville Police Department in Arkansas posted a warning about wiping down shopping carts in order to avoid contact with the dangerous opioid Fentanyl. This was during a time when a number of high profile stories featuring Fentanyl were featuring in the mainstream media, most notably a story of how a police officer collapsed soon after brushing off a suspicious white power thought to have been Fentanyl from his shirt that he came into contact with during a drugs search.

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However one month after the story broke about the police officer collapsing merely by brushing off the drug from his shirt did experts express their credulity about the event. Jeremy Samuel Faust, an instructor at Harvard Medical School, wrote a piece in Slate titled ‘The viral story about the cop who overdosed by touching Fentanyl is nonsense’ In that article, Faust noted –

…neither fentanyl nor even its uber-potent cousin carfentanil (two of the most powerful opioids known to humanity) can cause clinically significant effects, let alone near-death experiences, from mere skin exposure.
…
Each of the medical and toxicology professionals I asked agreed that it’s implausible that one could overdose from brushing powder off a shirt. Skin cannot absorb even the strongest formulations of opioids efficiently or fast enough to exert such an effect.

It is true that organisations such as the DEA did warn about the potential dangers from mere skin contact with Fentanyl in instructional material for first responders, with numerous warnings claiming Fentanyl could be absorbed into the skin. However such advice has since been walked back given the lack of evidence and research that incidental and brief contact with Fentanyl in small quantities can result in any significant side effects. The CDC currently notes –

Skin contact is also a potential exposure route, but is not likely to lead to overdose unless large volumes of highly concentrated powder are encountered over an extended period of time.

The UK Government website follows in a similar vein –

Incidental skin contact is unlikely to lead to harmful effects, especially if the contaminated skin is promptly washed with water

What perhaps makes this warning even more frivolous however, is that many variants of it urge readers use sanitizing wipes on shopping cart handles, which isn’t recommended. Even the older DEA material we linked to earlier recommends against such actions, since such wipes may contain alcohol, which is a skin penetrant and may lead to increased absorption.

Do NOT use hand sanitizer. Hand sanitizers may contain alcohol, a skin penetrant, which may increase the absorption of fentanyl through the skin.

As for the Leachville Police Department, they soon deleted their social media post about wiping down cart trolley handles and offered an apology.

The post about the fentanyl was sent so me from another officer at another Department. I simply shared it. I’m should have checked into it further before I posted it. Sorry for the confusion

[SIC]

As such, we don’t recommend spreading the above warnings.