why does eating soap/detergent make you sick? Since stomach fluid is acidic and soap is basic, wouldn’t they just cancel out?
In: Biology
A few things here:
1. Strong detergents like concentrated laundry pods are basic to the point that you could get chemical burns in your throat and mouth before the soap even made it to your stomach. So that’s bad.
2. Just because acid and bases “cancel each other out” doesn’t mean you want that to happen. Your stomach is acidic for a reason. Your body tries to keep the various environments in your organs in relatively stable condition, including pH. Your body can handle mild disruptions, but large changes take a toll on your body while it tries to return to normal conditions, and could even cause immediate damage. Your cells like the pH they live in, you shouldn’t try to change that.
3. There are lots of chemicals in soaps, like fragrances, dyes, solvents, surfactants, etc. They aren’t meant for human consumption, they are meant to clean things. Possibly sanitize things. And sanitizers aren’t usually picky about what they’re sanitizing. They’ll kill your human cells just as happily as germs.
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