Does homemade soap disinfect at all ??

Hello everyone,

We all know that homemade soap can feel great on our skin. However, someone brought up this point and I didn't know how to answer: One thing that soap is supposed to do is kill some bacteria, and hinder the spread of microbes.

Do the saponified salts in our soaps do this ?

Thanks

You don't need soap to kill bacteria. In fact antibacterial soaps cause more problems than they help, but I won't get into that. Studies show antibacterial soaps versus regular soaps make no difference in the amount of bacteria on the hands left after washing. What DOES make a difference is washing technique, washing the hands for a long enough period of time and the friction with the soap during the process.

Welcome Gaspar from Montgomery County, MD! (from a former resident of Howard Cty) How are you, and how is MD? My friends tell me I've missed a frigid, frigid winter!

Soap, whether store bought, detergent, or homemade, doesn't kill germs. There a chemistry thing with molecules (that I'm not knowledgeable enough to put into words) that explains why soap washes dirt, oil, and bacteria/viruses from our skin. Through the washing process, the dirt and germs are lifted from the skin and are attracted to the something in the soap, and rinsed away.

Lin is correct about triclosan causing problems. My brother the civil engineer warned me 3 decades away that soap and other products with triclosan will be major issues for the environment.

I didn't know that it was the washing technique that removed germs. I learned something here. I always thought that the store-bought soap had a special germ-killing ingredient. I have also heard that antibacterial soap is not what it's cracked up to be. In the public school system, the students frequently use hand sanitizer. Is this good ?

lenarenee said:

Welcome Gaspar from Montgomery County, MD! (from a former resident of Howard Cty) How are you, and how is MD? My friends tell me I've missed a frigid, frigid winter!

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Hello lenarenee,

Yes, we certainly had a winter here in MD. I can't complain. I don't go to Howard County much, so I don't know much about Howard City.

Ditto the above. Slap the person who asked you if your soap kills germs on the back of the head and tell them to stop being a ninny*.

If you imagine that a soap molecule is a person falling down a cliff. Our skin is the cliff. Water is something very important to the falling person and dirt is parts of the cliff face - the falling person is being weighed down by the important thing and they try to grab the cliff face to stop falling. The cliff face breaks off and they fall to their dooooooom!

A soap molecule binds with the water and then has one binding (or arm!) free, which it grabs on to the dirt with. The fight then comes with how easily the dirt comes off from our skin.

I'm pretty certain (and here we enter uncertainty for me) that germs can also be washed off like dirt to some degree.

* only slap them if you really have to!

I can't imagine anyone asking for a soap with any disenfectant. It makes my skin crawl thinking about it.

Soap does disinfect. It facilitates the removal of bacteria and viruses.
Does it "kill" germs? Not on skin or surfaces.
But if the germs are not where they can infect someone, what does it matter? The drain and sewer pipes are not going to have a problem with them.

Great analogy, TEG! And, yes, the germs go with the dirt and dead skin cells.

Our society, thanks to the advertising agencies and the media, has become convinced that every "germ" must die. We have spent many, many millions of dollars investing into this fallacy.

If you look at the most healthy children, they grow up in households with pets and dirt, and germs. It keeps their immune systems from attacking everything causing allergies and leading to other health issues.

The primary ingredient in "disinfectant" products is triclosan, and triclosan is far from safe!

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/...l-soaps-linked-with-impaired-muscle-function/

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles...to-gauge-effectiveness-of-antibacterial-soaps

We lived just a hop, skip and a jump from Montgomery county; and of course, used the Silver Spring metro for trips to Smithsonian.

As for hand sanitizer, most of them are alcohol based and I haven't found a safety warning regarding their use, but I'm interested to hear what other
soapers might have learned.

We had 3 boys in Howard cty public schools, and once the teachers started a daily practice of using the sanitizer, I really didn't notice much difference in the frequency of the illness they boys came home with.

Now when they were re-districted to a new school (meaning not overcrowded and each classroom had it's own sink and water fountain) the practice there was that each student wash hands before eating lunch. There was a HUGE difference in the amount of illnesses the boys brought home.

Just as a note of curiosity: since I work in childcare and really hate getting sick, I started using the new oral spray called Halo. (knock on wood....haven't been sick in a year.)

Once upon a time, I was a college student training to be a medical laboratory technologist. One of the things we did, was swab random objects around the school and culture it, which we did (toilet seat, light switches, hair/scalp, etc...). The swabbed objects resulting in the most colony forming units (bacterial growth), was the hair/scalp and the bar of soap by the sink.

Soap provides a vehicle to remove dirt and germs from our skin, but it certainly doesn't kill anything unless it is made antibacterial by a specially added ingredient.

We were all shocked, that's why I remember this 25 years later.

That's why forums like this are great. They really shine the light of truth onto things and dispel the darkness of lies and misconceptions.

When I hear things like "there are more bacteria on your chopping board than on your toilet seat" I get worried - not because I think that there is something wrong with my chopping board, but because of the twisting that goes on in advertising.

If pure amount of bacteria is what we use to judge if something should be bleached or not, then let's all look at some numbers. 50 bacteria per square inch on a loo seat, 10,000 bacteria per sq inch on a chopping board. 1 Million per sq inch of a dish cloth. 10 Million per sq inch on a kitchen sponge.

Wow. High number. Want to sanitise that sponge, eh?

Human skin? 32 million per square inch! Get that bleach rubbed in to your skin. That's not even going in to how much is in our stomachs.

My point with all this? If we just look at shocking numbers, it makes no sense what so ever. More bacteria on your chopping board than loo seat - but is that a bad thing?

People lived a very long time with no real germ control in their daily lives. I'm not saying that it's not needed in hospitals and so on - but as has been said, just wash things properly with out bleaching every surface.

I lived with a woman for a while and she was manic with bleaching things. I was ill so much it was not funny. Then I lived with some people who were not quite so crazy with it and wasn't ill as much. Our bodies need a certain amount, but because of advertising and people listening to an authoritative voice telling us about how we will die if we don't use this certain cleaning product, people just go to extremes.

Rant over, sorry - it just really annoys me.

inkyfingers said:

Once upon a time, I was a college student training to be a medical laboratory technologist. One of the things we did, was swab random objects around the school and culture it, which we did (toilet seat, light switches, hair/scalp, etc...). The swabbed objects resulting in the most colony forming units (bacterial growth), was the hair/scalp and the bar of soap by the sink.

Soap provides a vehicle to remove dirt and germs from our skin, but it certainly doesn't kill anything unless it is made antibacterial by a specially added ingredient.

We were all shocked, that's why I remember this 25 years later.

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I am a registered nurse. I took microbiology. We did the same thing. And people wonder why I am squicked by the thought of using bar soaps for routine handwashing(especially in the kitchen!) And while I know good and well that the vast majority of those bacteria are not ones that harm us, I still see that petri dish. I make liquid soap for handwashing. I like my liquid soap for handwashing.

Weirdly I was a veterinary microbiologist and I've gone the other way. Don't get me wrong, I like my toilets disinfected but I am far less germ paranoid than my mother who has no microbiological training whatsoever.

I use to work in a juvenile facility and as a staple there they had hand sanitize dispensers. I never saw much use to them.

If any has not told you, soap does not really kill germs, it just cleans dirt so to speak. It also may or may not take care of bacteria both good and bad. Also, in terms of cleaning, bubbles do matter. They act as a transporter from dirt on the body to the water and finally rinsed off. You do not need a lot of bubbles but in some respect they are necessary.

I personally would not seek a soap that was a disinfectant. Although, some soaps like dial are antibacterial which could be beneficial, but to me it is label appeal.

If you are looking for anti anything, it is not going to come from the oils and water/lye mixture. It is going to come from additives like essential oils, plant matter, etc. The only additive that comes to mind right off the top of my head is borax which does disinfect(it is used in laundry powders/liquids). I am sure there are more but honestly stay away from it. Let your body fight it naturally.

I think borax might have some issues associated with it too. It is restricted in the EU as it causes reproductive toxicity.

When I do craft fairs, I will occasionally have a customer who says, "Oh, I only use anti-bacterial soap." So I now have a print out, with quotes from the Mayo Clinic, the CDC, and others, which explain why anti-bacterial soaps and alcohol based cleansers are not the best option. The print out ends with this quote.

"The takeaway: If you are worried about MRSA, E. coli, SARS, influenza or simply the common cold, you know you should wash your hands.
Thoroughly.
Plain soap and water will do."

Good handwashing technique, lots of friction, running water, with good handmade soap, of course....is really all you need.

If your looking for label appeal some EO's have a better antibiotic ability then triclosan does. Tea tree, lemon, clove and oregano all exhibit antibaterial qualities that are much stronger then triclosan mosty because of it's overuse. Now since soap washes the bacteria off it doesn't matter much from a bacteria count on your hands stand point.

inkyfingers said:

Once upon a time, I was a college student training to be a medical laboratory technologist. One of the things we did, was swab random objects around the school and culture it, which we did (toilet seat, light switches, hair/scalp, etc...). The swabbed objects resulting in the most colony forming units (bacterial growth), was the hair/scalp and the bar of soap by the sink.

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This is the reason I use liquid soap for the toilet! Not disinfectant, just the liquid type... so the soap can't sit there growing bacteria.
Of course, a saltbar wouldn't... but a salt bar for a hand soap? :O seems like a waste of a salt bar. (I love my salt bars... )
I'm also a med lab scientist, and love micro. Like Saponista, I've 'gone the other way' - not too worried at all about it.
As explained in a micro lecture, if the good bacteria are knocked off your skin (or wherever), that just makes room for the bad bacteria to grow!

It does desinfect to a degree but it doesn't completely removes all the germs.
I am student nurse and we were taught that friction of drying hands with something actually does most of germ removal, but not 100% of them.
I mean, in normal household environment, what's the point in completely desinfecting hand if there are germs everywhere.
We did some lab tests at university and I was very surprised at the amount of different germs I Cary on my skin, hair, glasses and my nose gave particularly nasty results.

fuzz-juzz said:

We did some lab tests at university and I was very surprised at the amount of different germs I Cary on my skin, hair, glasses and my nose gave particularly nasty results.

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yeahhhhh noses are grossssssssss.
(So gross that we don't even make a slide from a swab cause there's just way too much gunk).

I think an important point to make after doing these sorts of labs (swab your hand and plate it out etc) is to then ask "now... is anyone SICK despite all these germs?"

Actually one of our pracs was swabbing hands pre & post handwashing, and we had like five students use different hand-washes - so water, soap & water, hospital grade disinfecting soap etc.
Not much difference between soap & water and the harsh stuff.