Isn’t lye harmful and dangerous?
How can you call your soap ‘natural’ if it contains lye?
You may have heard about how lye can burn your skin, your eyes, and lungs and are wondering how to keep this off of your skin and out of your home.
There are different types of soap making and some processes require lye and others do not. Here at Ancient Soap, we specialize in the cold process bar soap making.
The cold process method of soap making is one of the oldest methods of making soap. In olden days, soap was made with wood ash, aka lye, which is highly alkaline and soluble in water. This wood ash was mixed with water, and then mixed with animal fat to create soap. It wasn’t a fancy process, but the end result produced a hard bar with a bubbly lather that cleansed the skin and hair while also moisturizing and protecting the skin.
Today, lye is commercially manufactured but the process of creating cold process soap is still the same. Lye and water are mixed together, added to the selected blend of fats or oils, and you instantly have a chemical reaction called soap.
The beauty of how this chemical reaction works is that the lye is only harmful in its raw state, when mixed with water, and for approximately 48hrs after the soap is made. After this initial 48 hr period, the lye is completely neutralized because the chemical reaction of turning fats into soap is complete. At this point, the soap has not completely lost it’s water content and is not ready for use, but the lye is 100% neutralized.
Is lye harmful and dangerous? The short but incomplete answer is yes, but proper knowledge of how to handle lye can take the danger and risk out the equation. It is impossible to make cold process bar soap without lye. We still consider bar soap natural even with needing to use lye because of it being completely neutralized after 48 hrs and before it ever gets placed in your shower.
You can rest easy, enjoy your favorite sudsy, creamy bar of soap, and enjoy the benefits of knowing your bar soap from Ancient Soap is made with highly nourishing plant based oils and scented only with essential oils. Our main goal is to provide high quality products that have you and your skins health at the center of our focus. Each recipe has been formulated by Julia, the owner. Different blends and amounts of oils creates a different result in your experience using the soap. Some of our bars have an extremely creamy lather, others have more of a fluffy lather.
Stay tuned for our soap flight where you can try a sampler pack to see which type of soap and scents you like the best.