Natural Soaps for Your Health and Wellbeing

I've just been researching soap for my web site. I'm not a vegetarian any more but I was a bit horrified to learn that a whole lot of modern soap is made from rendered animal fat!

How many vegetarians and vegans actually know that?

This has to be quite an enormous part of the meat trade. I'm not about to give up leather - or meat for that matter - but I will switch to vegetarian soaps.

So what are modern soaps - the kind you find in supermarkets - made from?

In most cases they are made from rendered animal fats, often beef fat. There's also a clutch of added fragrances and sometimes extra oil so that the company can claim health benefits for your skin. And of course, caustic soda.

Need we be worried?

About the caustic soda, No! Caustic soda or "lye" has been used in soap making for generations. It is not a particularly safe material if it comes to using it around the home. If you are exposed to it at work - in a soap factory, for example, it is an occupational hazard. Repeat exposure to fumes may damage your health. If it comes into contact with your skin it can cause severe burns because it is, literally, caustic. But once it's reacted with the fats in soap it becomes harmless.

There are some concerns about the "natural" sounding ingredients, though.

Some fragrances contain artificial musks which are suspected of causing health problems in some individuals. They also persisit in the environment and eventaully arrive in our water sources.

There are huge health implications in that, of course!

Often soap manufacturers don't list the sources of fragrance that they use, so we have no way of knowing exactly what's in there. According to the EWG, "fragrance" mixtures are exempt from product labeling laws. They can include hundreds of individual ingredients and often act as human allergens. A recent survey found that as many as one in 50 people suffer immune system damage from exposure to fragrance.

What's the solution?

Buy vegetarian soaps from many of the excellent small-scale soap manufacturers. Across America and increasingly in Europe and Britain there are hundreds of home craftspeople who make amazing and excellent soaps. Many of them are made with 100% pure natural, organic materials, apart from the lye, of course.

You can find these products in farmers' markets, craft shops and some health food shops.
It's great to know that, not only are you not going to give yourself a headache from unknown chemicals in your bath water, you are supporting biodiversity and organic farming.

And the best thing is they are a sensory delight , with beautiful colours, textures and natural scents.