Question about a soap label

[Chefmom]

A friend of mine in Australia, who is trying to find better soaps to buy sent me this snap of a label of a soap he picked up. His first thought was "where is the lye?", and I found it unusual that no sodium hydroxide is listed on the label either. However, I also know nothing about soap label laws in Australia....

I also had a chuckle over the fact that the big letters state "Botanical Soap, OLIVE OIL" when olive oil is listed as an ingredient after fragrance, so there is no way there could be much olive oil in the soap.

After I looked at it again, I googled the ingredients... EDTA and HEDP since both of those were foreign ingredients to me. My results gave me very long chemical names and ended up just confusing me more....

Does anyone know what those ingredients are supposed to DO in soap?

 

[Dahila]

EDTA cuts down soap scum, HEDP is also chellating agent. Wait for Deeanna she is our guru she will translate it into plain language for regular people )

 

[lionprincess00]

Any name of a chemical additive, go to Google. Type the name (edta in this instance), and type swiftcraftymonkey after the search word your curious about. You will learn all you ever wanted to know about it lol.

http://swiftcraftymonkey.blogspot.com/2009/10/edta-chelating-and-sequestering-anti.html?m=1

Edit.
From what I can tell, the hedp is etidronic acid.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etidronic_acid

 

[dixiedragon]

My understanding (which could be flawed) is that here in the US there is no lye in the final product, so you are supposed to list "sodium lard ate, sodium cocoate" etc, which means those oils are saponified.

 

[hmlove1218]

Yeah but if you do that, then you're supposed to know the correct proportions of each. Also, you have to list glycerin, and the leftover oils from your superfat. That's labeling what came out of the soap pot. It's easier for most people to label what goes in the soap pot because it doesn't require a lab test to figure out what order to list ingredients.