Ok. Dumb butt question, I’m sure.
Does a bar of soap clean itself?
Being it’s soap and all?
Just wonderin’ because mid-Daughter came and got a bar of soap from me. These people never take care of their needs. Seems I buy the “good” stuff. ( what’s on sale, usually. But I got them fooled)
She brought the half used bar back to my bathroom today and put it in my sink.
Do these people not even know me? I ain’t using that bar of soap. I’m slightly afraid to touch it, barehanded. (Yeah, I’m a germaphobe. Was that way many years then COVID hit and it escalated the feeling. I’m working on it.)
She has stinky boys. She keeps her personal hygiene well. But she has a new boyfriend. Maybe he left germs on or near her. I don’t need that shit.
How do I know what germs are floating around here? Heck, Ivy the cleanest woman I ever met had a bubonic butt boil recently. See germs are everywhere.
I just know that bar of soap lurking in my sink is crawling with pestilence.
It’s been decades since I’ve used bar soap. Liquid soap, Beckers, liquid soap! In a pump bottle! Buy enough dispensers for everywhere you use hand and body soap, and then refill all your little pump bottles from a giant refill container. How is it possible that a germophobe has not discovered liquid soap?
This conversation is making me feel better about my tendency to clean the outside of the hand sanitizer dispenser by wiping it down with sanitizer-wetted hands, especially the pump.
I have pumpers and soap in them. Thanks to my diligence.
But stinky boys need bar soap. And apparently mid-Daughter has no compunction about using it after them. Not me.
I’d wash them boys with Gojo hand cleaner if she’d let me.
I wipe my hand sanitizer bottles with a sanitizer wipe on a regular basis. They are right on the counter beside the liquid soap and the hand sanitizer pumper. Overkill? That’s yer opinion
Most of my life I’ve shared a house with other people. And I’ve never shared a house in which people had individual bars of soap. One bar at each bathroom sink, one at the kitchen sink, everybody uses it. Yes, of course it cleans itself. For one thing, it’s soap, it’s what does the cleaning. For another, the outer layer rinses off every time it’s used.
All those little pump bottles are far more likely to harbor germs on their plastic surfaces than a bar of soap is.
Why would you think that? Soap is not a disinfectant per se. Soap gets rid of germs by helping to combine body oils and grease with dirt and water – technically, it has both hydrophobic and hydrophilic properties so it merges both together and washes them away. Bacteria left on a wet bar of soap are likely to thrive until washed away with the next use. I need not even mention a bar of soap that has mysterious hairs on it whose origin is unknown! A plastic pump bottle of liquid soap is either going to remain dry and untouched (hence, fairly sanitary) or is going to get wet if, say, refilling it or using it in the shower – in which case it will also likely get pretty soapy and get well rinsed down, thus fulfilling the cleansing role of soap. But maybe you use your pump dispensers differently than I use mine. I’ve been using them for decades and I’m still alive – I haven’t even had a cold in about ten years!
“Soap molecules disrupt the fatty layer or coat surrounding the virus, ” says Dr. David Goldberg, an internist and infectious disease specialist at NewYork-Presbyterian Medical Group Westchester and an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. “Once the viral coat is broken down, the virus is no longer able to function.”
Not to get too nitpicky, but that’s not what “disinfectant” means. Soap doesn’t destroy bacteria, it just washes them away and dilutes them. It does the same for viruses, but its action against viruses (only viruses) has an additional effect derived from its ability to disrupt the lipid envelope surrounding the virus cells if they’re exposed to soap long enough. But again, not for bacteria.
Sorry! Just trying to encourage more use of liquid soap!
A disinfectant doesn’t necessarily apply to the ability to disinfect only bacteria. From Wikipedia,
A disinfectant is a chemical substance or compound used to inactivate or destroy microorganisms on inert surfaces.[1] Disinfection does not necessarily kill all microorganisms, especially resistant bacterial spores; it is less effective than sterilization, which is an extreme physical or chemical process that kills all types of life.[1] Disinfectants are generally distinguished from other antimicrobial agents such as antibiotics, which destroy microorganisms within the body, and antiseptics, which destroy microorganisms on living tissue. Disinfectants are also different from biocides—the latter are intended to destroy all forms of life, not just microorganisms. Disinfectants work by destroying the cell wall of microbes or interfering with their metabolism. It is also a form of decontamination, and can be defined as the process whereby physical or chemical methods are used to reduce the amount of pathogenic microorganisms on a surface.[2][3]
That’s fair. Most dictionaries define “disinfectant” as an antibacterial agent, but many of the same agents like alcohol that kill bacteria also neutralize viruses in the appropriate concentrations, so it’s a blurry distinction. Bacteria generally love warm moist places, and that includes bar soap left in showers. The point I was making, wrt bacteria, is that just because it cleans you doesn’t mean it’s sterile!*
* Always remember to check bar soap for mysterious hairs of unknown origin!
Sixteen panelists were instructed to wash with the inoculated bars using their normal handwashing procedure. After washing, none of the 16 panelists had detectable levels of either test bacterium on their hands.
This makes me think of the bars of soap that were in the junior high and high school gym showers. We never had our own soap. The showers were stocked with small yellow bars of soap (Dial?) that stayed there until they were used up and a new bar was set out.
Who, me? Maybe, and certainly eventually; but not due to the soap; which hasn’t killed me in over 70 years.
I was trying to get fear out of your heart, not in, and am confused as to why you found my reassurance frightening.
From that report:
Thus, the results obtained using our new method were in complete agreement with those obtained with the previously published method even though the two methods differ in a number of procedural aspects. These findings, along with other published reports, show that little hazard exists in routine handwashing with previously used soap bars
They’re not only saying that this study says it’s not a problem; they’re saying that the general body of research on this question says that it’s not a problem.
Does anyone know of a case of disease transmission known to have been caused by contaminated soap? I spent a few minutes googling and didn’t find anything, but don’t have time to research it further.
Liquid soap in plastic bottles is massively more expensive, and environmentally worse, than bar soap in paper wrappers.
Because they were finding covid virus on plastic surfaces; though it’s true that they no longer think that’s a likely means of transmission. Also there’s an equivalent with plastic cutting boards.
