when you look at the ingredient lists of products like shower gel, conditioner etc. there are often several types of alcohol included…what’s the difference between these alcohols?

Question

A shower thought of mine haha

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

Alcohol does not inherrently mean drinking alcohol.

An alcohol is simply defined as any organic compound that carries at least one hydroxyl functional group (C-OH) bound to their aliphatic structure.

Ethanol is one type of alcohol, which we distill and ferment from sugars found in a variety of grains/starches/corn/fruits, etc. This is the alcohol that we drink in beer/liquor/wine.

Other common, but certainly not safe for consumption alcohols are Methanol (commonly known as wood alcohol) and Isopropanol (also known as rubbing alcohol). There are also a large number of OTHER alcohols which are all different types of solvents, precursors, preservatives, and fuels.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol