In a  recent news, NCP leader Sanjay Shinde got burnt in car fire. Reports say that there was short circuit in his car, the sparks of which led to the hand sanitiser catching fire which raged, ultimately leaving no escpe for him. 

The question is that do the hand sanitisers catch fire that easily? Or should we really ponder on the points of safety and hazards caused by the hand sanitisers? 
A study has revealed that hand sanitisers are unlikely to cause any fire but it is not impossible. Now this raises lots of questions. If it is not impossible, it cleraly runs the bells that we need to be extremely careful especially about leaving a bottle of hand sanitiser in a locked car. 

"Theoretically, a bottle of sanitiser bursting into fire on its own in a hot car is extremely unlikely - if not impossible," confirms renowned fire expert DK Shammi, who is also a fire advisor to the Government of India. Leaving a car parked out on a hot sunny afternoon for hours with a bottle of hand sanitiser on the dashboard is actually risky when a person returns to the car and wants to have one puff from his ciggy. The car goes up in flames with the first spark of the ciggy lighter. 

Dr Shammi says that we need to understand "flash point" before trying to understand the change in the situation. "Flash point" as per Dr Shammi is the minimum temperature at which a liquid forms vapour above its surface in sufficient concentration that it can be ignited.
Sanitisers have alcohol whose flash point is just 21°C. With places which experience too much of temperatures, the sanitiser of the opened bottle will evaporate quickly into the atmosphere. What is true about alcohol in sanitiser in liquid form is not true when it evaporates and turns into a highly flammable vapour trapped inside a hot car. "If the sanitiser bottle kept in a car is not airtight, the vapours will keep on accumulating inside the closed car and it will become like a gas chamber. Then all it will take to start a fire is a small spark which can be from ignition or even horn," explains Shammi.

Basically when people tell you that you should not leave a bottle of sanitiser in the car, they are not actually wrong. The bottle of sanitiser must be stored in cool place and should be airtight. If you have the habit of cleaning even your car key with a sanitiser, wait for a few seconds for it to dry before you insert it for ignition. Hand sanitisers do not catch fire on their own, but the heat can cause them to. Fact checks on this are still going on, but what has been explained by Dr Shammi is likely to be true and all we need is to be careful. 

(media reports)