Lye water | SA Health (2024)

FAQs

Is lye water good for health? ›

Health concerns

Lye water is a strongly alkaline (caustic) solution which can cause severe injury in the form of corrosive burns, especially to the throat, oesophagus and stomach if swallowed. These injuries can result in hospitalisation and permanent damage in severe cases.

Contact with very high concentrations of sodium hydroxide can cause severe burns to the eyes, skin, digestive system or lungs, resulting in permanent damage or death. Prolonged or repeated skin contact may cause dermatitis. Repeated inhalation of sodium hydroxide vapor can lead to permanent lung damage.

Lye in Soap: All Real Soap Starts with Lye, and It's Perfectly Safe. With many consumers turning to organic and natural products because of health worries or concerns over environmental impact, it can be difficult to parse through the hype and understand what products are effective and safe.

It will cause a toxic, chemical reaction. Lye is extremely caustic and can do severe damage. When water and lye are mixed together this is known as a lye solution. This mixing will also cause an exothermic reaction, this means that heat is given off as a byproduct of the chemical reaction occurring.

Ingestion of sodium hydroxide can cause spontaneous vomiting, chest and abdominal pain, and difficulty swallowing with drooling. Corrosive injury to the mouth, throat, esophagus, and stomach is extremely rapid and may result in perforation, hemorrhage, and narrowing of the gastrointestinal tract.

Heating up baking soda in the oven turns it from sodium bicarbonate into sodium carbonate, making it a slightly stronger alkali that'll better replace the lye.

Traditionally, lye soap was so harsh that it way only used to wash dishes, clothing, and other household items. This harsher lye soap wasn't good to wash the hands or body.

Using lye avoids the use of unnecessary synthetic chemicals larger companies may use that can cause skin irritation or allergies. Because lye creates soap with powerful natural cleansing properties, it makes for an amazing bar of handmade soap!

Is there lye in Dawn dish soap? Yes - it's listed on the packaging as 'Sodium Hydroxide' - otherwise known as lye. However, it isn't used for saponification. It is used as a pH adjuster.

Why do they put lye in drinking water? ›

To raise the pH of the water so that it doesn't have an adverse effect on the pipes and other equipment it comes into contact with. A very small percentage of lye is added to take the water a bit out of the acid range.

Your water would have to be really hard to cause so much trouble as to not be able to use it in your soap recipes - and the rinsing problem comes with really soft water, not hard. So, the quick answer is – you should be just fine with tap water.

A “small” amount, diluted with enough water, is not dangerous at all. The only concern, the difference between “small” and large, is the amount of sodium. Lye is more than half sodium on a dry basis, and too much sodium can be toxic.

Once lye-dipped pretzels are baked, they're totally safe (and delicious!) to eat.

Kansui, also called lye water or alkaline water (枧水 or 碱水 in Chinese) is an alkaline solution used in many cuisines. Kansui is a must-have ingredient for Japanese ramen noodles or Chinese (egg) noodles, giving them the typical yellow tone and elasticity, and most importantly a crispy and bouncy consistency.