The Dirty Truth About Industrial Grade Lye
Part 6
An Honest Word About the People Making This Soap
Here's something we genuinely believe,
and it matters: the vast majority of small-batch, cottage, and mom-and-pop soap makers using industrial-grade lye are not bad people. They are creative, passionate, community-minded humans who got into soap making because they love craft and wanted to make something beautiful with their hands. They aren't sitting in a lab coat twirling a mustache and cackling about heavy metal exposure. They're reading forum threads, following well-meaning advice from people with more experience, and trying to keep their small operations financially viable.
The dangerous advice they're following is being spread by people who are also well-meaning — who genuinely believe that if the label says 100% NaOH, purity is purity. What they haven't factored in is the difference between a marketing claim and a certified food-grade standard, or the implications of production methods, or the meaning of "heavy metal impurities" at the parts-per-million level when multiplied across years of daily skin exposure.
This isn't a scandal. It's an education gap. And we'd rather be the Sasquatch who fills that gap than the one who watched quietly from the tree line.
But Wait — What ELSE Might Be in There?
So far we've only talked about what's in the lye. That's just one ingredient. Let's zoom out and look at the full picture of what lives in the average commercial soap or body wash found in 99% of American shower caddies.
This is where EDTA enters the chat — and you're not going to love this part.
EDTA:
The Unlocked Door You Didn't Know Was Open
EDTA
(Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid) and its salts — Disodium EDTA, Tetrasodium EDTA — are synthetic chelating agents used widely in commercial soaps, shampoos, and cleansers to bind mineral ions in hard water and extend product shelf life. On paper, it sounds like a pretty helpful ingredient. In practice, it has a side effect that should give every conscious consumer pause.
EDTA works by disrupting calcium ions at the cell surface — the same ions that help maintain the structural integrity of your skin barrier. In doing so, EDTA acts as a penetration enhancer, increasing the ability of other chemicals to absorb through the skin. The Cosmetic Ingredient Review Expert Panel noted this directly in its safety assessment: "Because of the potential to increase the penetration of other chemicals, formulators should continue to be aware of this when combining these ingredients with ingredients that previously have been determined to be safe, primarily because they were not significantly absorbed."
In other words: ingredients that might otherwise just sit on your skin and rinse off? EDTA holds the door open and waves them inside.
The ingredient profile of Tetrasodium EDTA also raises eyebrows for another reason: it is synthesized using ethylenediamine, formaldehyde (classified as a known human carcinogen by the National Cancer Institute), and sodium cyanide. It appears in 7,691 cosmetic formulations as of 2019. If that doesn't make you want to check your product labels, we don't know what will.