Essentially I am wondering what the chemical and functional differences are between dish soap, hand soap, and body wash.
What are the circumstances one could use one of these instead of the one designated for that purpose?
Like if I am out of one of these, would using one of the others until I refill what I’m out of be bad?
In: Chemistry
They are all “soap”, just with a different recipe to make them. And yes, you will be fine taking a shower and using dish soap to wash yourself.
The concentration of surfactants, moisturizers, and/or fragrance etc. There was a thread a few days ago about the definition of soap at what constitutes it, you should check it out too.
They are designed to target different types of dirt and have different strengths depending on how sensitive the target is.
Dish soap needs to eat through thick and burned oils so it needs to be very strong with a lot of detergents to break down oil, and because people often wear gloves while doing dishes they don’t need to worry about skin sensitivity. Using it on skin will make it very clean but very dry.
Hand soap, body wash, and face wash are much more similar, because they are meant for cleaning skin, but different parts of your skin are more sensitive than others. Hand soap is the strongest and may contain chemicals for killing bacteria because hands get the dirtiest, face wash is the weakest and may contain chemicals for fighting acne, and body wash is somewhere in the middle. All three might contain moisturizers to help with dryness the soap causes. These would work for slightly dirty dishes but wouldn’t be able to cut through thick grease.
Latest Answers