"Soap"

So, we keep being advised to wash our hands frequently with "soap", but what exactly is considered "soap" when it comes to being able to kill Covid-19?
- bar soap?
- liquid soap?
- shower gel?
- body wash?
- bubble bath?
- various facial cleansing products of different types?
- washing-up liquid?
- dishwasher products?
- detergents?
- other laundry liquids (not all are detergents)?
- shampoo?
- what about other toiletries such as moisturisers and handcreams (of which I'm using rather a lot at the moment)?
... ?

Are there certain "magic words" we should be looking out for on the packaging of various toiletries and cleaning products which would indicate that they should be effective in killing Covid-19?

 

As far as I know, all normal hand soap works. It’s something to do with soap breaking down the lipid layer (I think)? But you don’t need antibacterial soap. I think anything that becomes soap-y and foamy in your hands; like washing up liquid, hand soap; bar soap etc. (With bar soap though it’s probably hard to decontaminate as you may end up getting coronavirus on the actual bar).

I don’t know about dishwasher products detergents etc but those probably wouldn’t be good for your hands anyway!

 

Soap has a fairly specific meaning as far as I remember from o'Level chemistry but for these purposes it's probably anything that encourages oils to bond with water.

As such anything on that list could probably be considered soap for these purposes.

https://www.thoughtco.com/how-dos-soap-clean-606146

 

Ordinary soap, any brand. It is one of mankind’s most wonderful inventions.

The virus depends on a lipid envelope, Lipid means fat. Soap and water emulsifies fat, very efficiently ripping the virus into useless little bits. Ya just gotta use handwashing technique so that the soap and water get all over your hands and under your fingernails and then get washed off, there are videos of it.

 

I use a normal soap bar without fragrance and with - I don't know what the right word is - lipid regulating properties (?).
So the hands don't dry out so much from all the washing.

I think the soap bar itself can't get contaminated since any virus would get destroyed touching the bar.

 

Now the reason I know this is doing research into these things in the past..as far as I know, it does seem to live on soap. Contact with the soap itself doesn’t kill virus or bacteria, it’s the physical act of actually rubbing and lathering the soap with the water which breaks down the lipid later due to the surfactants in the soap. However, because every time you use soap, you will be doing this (lathering and using soap) and therefore killing any bacteria that would have found its way onto the your hands from the soap, the fact that bacteria is on the soap first, doesn’t appear to actually cause any problems and doesn’t appear to contaminate hands.

So it can live on the bar soap but doesn’t cause many issues. However for me, I would always be aware that the bar soap can have bacteria/viruses on it, incase I were to touch it and not wash my hands with it afterwards.

We do use bar soap (not for hand washing but for body); and after every time I use it, I lather the soap itself up with running water and rinse it under the tap. This will get rid of the top layer of soap and any bacteria/virus.

Bar soap that is antibacterial may kill it on contact - but thats because of other chemicals included that do that.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/germs-bar-of-soap_n_6349934

 

I would have never guessed! I remember there was a Friends episode on that though.

Rinsing the bar under water after use and letting it dry seems to be a good idea.

I thought that liquid soap would be worse because you touch the dispenser thing on top with unwashed hands. But then it wouldn't matter because you wash your hands right after.

 

I was thinking about that the other day. So funny

 

I keep meaning to mention this important point- keep your fingernails trimmed as short as possible unless you are using a scrubbing brush to get deep down.

 

yeah for some reason my nails picked 2 wks ago to all be long & strong, for the first time in yrs... I realised i'd have to cut them all off. I left the thumb long as it is essential for certain things for me. But I use a brush to clean under it with & use an orange stick (wooden stick used for manicures) to poke an alcohol wipe down under it too. Even at the best of times fingernails harbour *loads of bacteria under them, well that's what I was taught at college anyway.

 

Thanks for the replies (I've added a couple more options to my original post). I had a feeling it might well be the surfactants which did the damage, but wasn't sure.

 

Real soap is actually different from most synthetic detergents like washing up liquid in that the combination of sodium ions and weak stearate/oleate/palmitate ions generates a very alkaline environment in biological terms. Not as alkaline as caustic soda but enough to be seriously bactericidal. Ordinary soap has been used for scrubbing for surgery for years and has powers significantly beyond just detergent.

However, for viruses the pH factor may be less critical - although it may well contribute to denaturing proteins.

Another thing that strikes me about bar soap is that to get a lather you need to produce a thick emulsion that forms a layer over the hands. With washing up liquid once it is fully mixed with water the result is too think to stick to you - unless of course you put the washing up liquid on your hands before any water and coat hands completely before wetting. You can have a lot of lather with non-soap detergents maybe without getting surface coverage for long enough. Surgical scrub solutions were always goo-forming films.

 

I can recommend https://www.friendlysoap.co.uk

i have the tea tree and lavender for body and hair.

 

So it sounds like “wash your hands” won’t do for anyone born in the last 60 years. We were not taught how to wash our hands, there is actually a method and an ordered series of steps that must be followed or one is just splashing microbes around.
I’m a little cheesed that I was never taught this, and I’m very po’d that everyone who handles my food was never taught that.

Except probably Costco, they are on it with sanitation. And also about cooking their chickens exactly the same way every time, never dry never overdone.

 

i'd be interested to know what soap is. although this is off topic.

i use a chemical witch's brew fake soap with sls and stuff in it. it still supposedly does the "link oil/fat with water" thing and thus probably attacks covid. i need something for laundry with guaranteed no soap.

soap in a narrow sense seems to be something like this: [oil or fat] + lye = soap + glycerin. that's probably wrong. no chemistry bg.

i cannot use soap in what seems to be that narrow sense because, with even very brief exposure to extremely tiny amounts [e.g. residue in laundry], i get a delayed non-histaminergic angioedema attack with normal c1inh.

 

Not far off. Real soap is:

fatty acids (oil/fat) + salt = soap + hydrochloric acid

In recent times the fat has been plant derived palmitic, stearic or oleic acids - hence the famous soap brand 'Palmolive'. The salt precipitates out sodium stearate, sodium palmitate etc. It always seemed strange to me that you were left with hydrochloric acid which one might expect to dissolve soap. But that seems to have been the traditional method. Maybe manufacturers actually use something more alkaline like sodium hydroxide in modern times.

oil + NaOH = soap + H20

 

i don't know if i have tried salt soap. the soaps i have tried seem to be sodium or potassium hydroxide with oil or fat. i am told they precipitate glycerin [which is sometimes taken out].

apparently sodium or potassium can be chosen to make harder or softer soaps.

for example, i reacted to a soap made from lard, sodium hydroxide, and potassium hydroxide as the only items in the ingredients.

also i reacted to a laundry detergent [7th generation] with these ingredients, which according to a soap maker indicate saponification due to the possible plant fats, the sodium hydroxide, and glycerin [although it does contain salts]: water, laureth-6 (plant-derived cleaning agent), sodium lauryl sulfate (plant-derived cleaning agent), sodium citrate (plant-derived water softener),
glycerin (plant-derived enzyme stabilizer), sodium chloride
(mineral-based viscosity modifier), oleic acid
(plant-derived anti-foaming agent), sodium hydroxide
(mineral-based pH adjuster), calcium chloride
(mineral-based enzyme stabilizer), citric acid
(plant-derived pH adjuster), protease, amylase, and
mannanase (plant-derived enzyme blend soil removers), and benzisothiazolinone and methylisothiazolinone (synthetic preservatives).

a single washing with this or similar, plus 4 more washings in plain water or plain water plus vinegar to get it out, still produced the systemic reaction upon brief touch. 6-8 washings made the fabric safe.

the delay and lack of antihistamine working for it makes me wonder if it has something to do with t cells. which makes me wonder if there is an m.e. connection with t cells. or a similar connection with common comorbidities.

although nobody else in the m.e. community seems to have this issue so there might be no such connection.

but anyway it seems i have a bit to go before i identify the parameters of the chemical composition of the trigger. i suppose there also is a[n almost negligible] chance that i reacted only to the laundry detergent and all the soaps coincidentally correlated.

but that is far-fetched as i got an increasingly shorter but noticeable delay upon each new soap i tried thus too many coincidences.

 

Years ago I went to a Shawarma take-out to order food, there was only one guy working there and he was wearing gloves. He handled the food and money with the same pair of gloves When I saw this I refused my food.

 

I've seen that so often & never buy from those places again. Just unbelievably dense behaviour.

 

@JemPD I tried to explain cross-contamination to him but he just shrugged.