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Baby Powder in soap?


Candybee

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Was talking with a fellow vendor at one of my markets this weekend. She said she used to buy handmade soap from this soaper. One day the vendor noticed the soap was different and asked the soaper about it. Then she said she stopped buying from the soaper because they said they starting using baby powder in their soap.

 

Has anyone heard of that? What would be the benefit of putting baby powder in their soap? It sounds ick. I love baby powder but not in my soap.

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That sounds ick to me as well.  All the years I've been making soap that's a first I've heard of adding baby powder. Though some folks add all kinds of strange things.   Maybe it would be like adding a clay?  Not sure.  I don't use a lot of clays in my soap either.

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Well, we use Kaolinite in soaps (I use it) for improved slip and feel of the soap and to help with the lather a bit, that's hydrated alumina silicate... Talc is hydrated magnesium silicate...  If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say it was to make the soap a tad more hair friendly. I wouldn't think it was a bad thing at all... Baby powder is frequently a mix of talc and cornstarch which I would think that the cornstarch would probably break down in the presence of lye and heat and turn into dextrose which is a really simple sugar and would probably lend some humectant and lather boosting qualities to the soap... Chemically speaking, I don't see this as being any sort of bad what-so-ever HOWEVER, there is something that would contribute to this person eschewing the baby powder soap.   

First off I'd hazard to guess that this was an elderly person and/or not from the U.S. who had the problem with the baby powder soap. WAY BACK WHEN rocks were learning to roll... Cheap bastard cheating merchants would add talc (aka: baby powder) or chalk to damned near EVERYTHING (notable mix ups in candy: 1858 Bradford Sweets Poisonings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1858_Bradford_sweets_poisoning), in order to make more product with the same amount of ingredients or to cheaply bulk out a product in order to raise the price.

My guess is that this person thinks adding baby powder to soap is tantamount to making a vastly inferior product in a dishonest manner. 

Just my 2 cents. 

Sponiebr   

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Why not just add kaolin then?!! Sorry but it still don't make no sense to me. Whatever the soaper was trying to achieve I'm sure something made for soapmaking would have accomplished it much better as well as being more cost effective and label appealing.

 

The vendor did say the soap felt weird in a bad way and no she is not a geezer.

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2 hours ago, Candybee said:

Why not just add kaolin then?!! Sorry but it still don't make no sense to me. Whatever the soaper was trying to achieve I'm sure something made for soapmaking would have accomplished it much better as well as being more cost effective and label appealing.

 

The vendor did say the soap felt weird in a bad way and no she is not a geezer.


Hmmmm... I'm not a chemist, but like I said might have been to make it more hair friendly. Magnesium silicate is a listed slip modifier, and if I had to guess I would think it would make the soap almost slimy and maybe a little harder to rinse off? I dunno... Purely stupid, empty, conjecture on my part. I am rather curious as to what the motivation was behind her dropping the soapmaker was. If you see her again Candybee could you ask why, and what was it about the soap that was weird? 

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  • 3 years later...
On 6/15/2017 at 9:29 PM, birdcharm said:

There has recently been a talcum powder lawsuit against J&J ... maybe this has given baby powder a bad name.

I can't believe what was awarded, btw ... just do a search for recent articles.

It has given it a bad name. But from what I understand, talc is harmful to the lungs by inhaling. If it is used not around the home, but in well-ventilated workspaces, I don't see the problem.

 

On 6/15/2017 at 8:58 PM, Candybee said:

Why not just add kaolin then?!! Sorry but it still don't make no sense to me. Whatever the soaper was trying to achieve I'm sure something made for soapmaking would have accomplished it much better as well as being more cost effective and label appealing.

 

I'm simply a hobbist, and I had never heard of kaolin until just now. I just use what I have around the home. I have pharmacetical grade talc so I use it. I have bentonite too, another type of clay, but please don't use this in anything that will go down the drain!!

 

 
 

 

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