Why There is No Such Thing As How to Make Soap Without Lye - Humblebee & Me (2024)

I’m glad to hear it, Michele 🙂 If I can spare anyone the anxiety I had when making my first batch of soap, then my job is done.

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Hi what causing me to iche housing soapy goat undderly pure goat milk soap lavvender?

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Please add/try for yourself- whichever that you can wash it off with vinegar & the pain/burn will be nullified greatly

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You’re very welcome! Glad to help 🙂 And have fun!

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I know! It’s funny, isn’t it, how scared you are the first time, and then how it is no big deal after a few batches. I guess nobody wants to be the person that encourages somebody to be careless, but I feel like a lot of sources go totally overboard with the lye terror 😛

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That’s so cool, Cheryl! I’ve heard soapnuts mentioned before, but I’ve never seen them around or been able to buy any. Apparently they contain natural surfactants, meaning they produce a lather when wet. That’s awesome! Now to find some… 😀

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Soap nuts are what I use for our laundry every day. They are not harmful to the environment or our septic tank and leave our clothes with a fresh scent. I do 3 to 4 loads a day (we have 5 kids and live on a small farm). I also have no allergic reaction to this natural product that grows on trees.

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I know the feeling of the first-batch soaping jitters! I was so terrified I was going to lose a limb or destroy my sense of smell or something, lol 😛 And to think I’m too lazy to put on goggles most of the time now, haha.

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Ouch! It sounds like we have both hurt ourselves much more with our other hobbies 😛 I once sewed through my finger… I was making a white dress, so my #1 concern was not bleeding on it, lol. Then there was the time I chopped off the tip of my thumb while making soup. I’m a mess, haha. And I sent you that e-mail, check your junk box for it 🙂

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I get mine from Home Hardwear these days, though you can get it online from Canwax or Saffire Blue. Make sure it is pure sodium hydroxide (or potassium hydroxide for liquid soap), and you should be good. Some drain cleaners, like Draino, have some lye in them, but they also have metal shards and other icky stuff you wouldn’t want in a bar of soap! Also, be prepared to show ID and sign a release of some kind, depending on where you get it, as it is a relatively dangerous chemical.

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Thanks for reading, Kira, and I’m so excited I’ve inspired you to make your own soap! Have fun 😀 And be careful, it’s addictive—I made 6 batches last weekend…

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Vivian—I would never, ever use raw lye to wash my body either! That is a recipe for some serious pain and likely a trip to the hospital as well. When I am working with raw, straight lye, I also take care not to breathe the fumes or let it touch my bare skin. However, when you use lye to make soap, it ceases to be lye and becomes soap (keep in mind every proper bar of soap you have ever used in your life has been made using lye, and you are still alive and well, yes?).

Think about it this way—do you ever feed your family chlorine? Of course not! It is seriously poisonous (it was the first poisonous gas used in WW1). But, you do feed them salt—sodium chloride, or NaCl. When chlorine is combined with sodium, it ceases to be dangerous, and becomes totally innocuous. This is the same with combining lye and fat! Once you’ve combined the lye with the proper amount of fat, it isn’t dangerous in the slightest.

Hope that helps 🙂 Don’t be afraid to make your own homemade soap using lye, it’s really fun, and if you can handle bleach or ammonia safely, and you can use a scale and follow directions, you won’t have any troubles.

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What do you wash your body with? You do wash, right? Ivory, Irish Springs?? All have lye. ALL soaps have lye. Once the chemical reaction happens…..its no longer lye. Its neutralized. Some of the foods and condiments we eat have dangerous ingredients in them when by themselves, but once combined are fine cuz their chemical makeup changes. Do some basic chemistry research. Might ease your concerns. Again….I’m curious what you wash with. Seriously, not being stupid.

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Hey Angel—It sounds like you have suuuuuper sensitive skin 🙁 Bummer. Perhaps even some respiratory sensitivities, given that you’re saying this is a life & death thing for you?

There is, however, something inconsistent about your story. You’re saying you’re allergic to lye, and you know this because you can’t use soap. That is sort of like saying you know you’re allergic to chocolate because you can’t eat scrambled eggs. As I explain in this article, there is no lye in a finished bar of soap unless somebody has done a seriously terrible job making that bar of soap (and if that was the case anybody who used the soap would find it to be painful and irritating). It is more likely that you are sensitive to something like sodium lauryl sulfate, which is a known irritant to many, and a common ingredient in detergents and shampoos. Either that, or you have used nothing but absolutely horridly made homemade soap for your entire life. As I noted in this article, many store bought “soaps” don’t even use lye in their production—they just add SLS and other surfactants to water. So, if you’re sensitive to those, you can’t fault lye for that at all because lye wasn’t involved at any point in the process.

Of course I’m not your doctor and I don’t know for sure, but it seems unlikely that you’re actually allergic to lye. How would you ever know? If you were ever exposed to straight up lye, of course you’d have a “reaction”—it’s a seriously caustic chemical! Every human in the world would have a reaction to it, but most of them can use soap without any ill effect. Since “allergic reactions occur when a person’s immune system reacts to normally harmless substances in the environment”, lye doesn’t really qualify since it’s not a “normally harmless substance”. Far from it.

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Nowhere did I see the author even insinuate that anyone was a whiner!

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I’m curious to know what you bath in as chlorine & ammonia are both added to municiple water supplies to make it safe. Also the chemical formula for bleach is NaClO, the Cl being chlorine, Na is salt & O is oxygen, do you have a problem with salt or oxygen? Basically bleach IS chlorine. If someone has told you are allergic to bleach & chlorine you may want to find a more qualified/knowledgeable health practioner as I am sure you are not allergic to oxygen, maybe salt. But then your body requires salt to perform it’s functions to keep you alive. I actually am extra sensitive to chlorine after working with chlorinated products for may years. Lye is a chemical compound and when mixed with other chemical compounds will produce new chemical compounds ei lye+fat=soap. Two things that manufacturers add to products are preservatives & dyes. These preservatives & dyes are often the culprit to many allergies & reactions such as sensitivities. BTW, caustic ingredients at too high of a level, which varies for each individual, are deadly to EVERYBODY not just the certain few. This is why they are labled as caustic.

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I’m not sure where you saw that video, but glycerin is definitely NOT the same thing as lye! Eeep. They are so different (dog vs. volcano kind of different) I almost don’t know to start. Here’s a few difference:

1. Glycerin is a pretty harmless, viscous liquid. Lye is a seriously caustic chemical.
2. You can put glycerin in lip gloss for a nice, shiny effect. Do this with lye and you will likely peel off several layers of your lips (or poison yourself).
3. You can use a glycerin suppository to cure constipation. Do this with lye and you will get a chemical burn in your butthole. (funny to say, likely not so funny in real life)

And so on and so forth… so yeah. Not the same thing.

You cannot, absolutely, 100%, make soap using glycerin instead of lye. That is sort of like trying to make cake with a boulder instead of flour… they are so, so different. I think, if you are making melt and pour soap, you can add additional glycerin, so maybe that’s what was going on in the video? I’ve never made melt and pour soap before so I’m not sure, but that would be the only possible thing that makes sense to me.

Hope that helps and feel free to get in touch with any additional questions 🙂

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Hi Kay—I’m so glad I set your mind at ease! That is exactly what I was aiming to do here 🙂

Ok. So, for your your questions. I’d start off by reading my article on basic soap making and my article on my all-in-one soap to get a general idea of how soap making goes, and what my fave soap recipe is. You will need a lye calculator to determine the amount of lye required for any soap recipe. I never, ever take somebody’s word on the amount of lye to use in soap recipe since it is so easy to re-calculate, and the consequences of getting it wrong can mean a ruined batch of soap (which is always sad, especially when you could have prevented it!).

I’ve never made soap using extra virgin coconut oil before, so I can’t say for sure that the scent won’t come through, but I can say I’ve never noticed the scent of an oil come through in a bar of soap. Also, by the time it’s saponified it’s mostly too late to go back and add some essential oils (you can drop some on the outside of the bar when its still soft and hope it absorbs before it evaporates, but that’s it). I always use the cheapest coconut oil I can get for soap making, and save my expensive organic extra virgin stuff for applications where I’ll notice and appreciate the scent.

As for using drops for measuring your essential oils for soap making: don’t. Drops are fine for lots of things, like a small batch of lotion or lip balm, but drops aren’t a real unit of measurement. They’re like a “pinch” or a “dash”. Since you need so little EO for lip balm, saying 10 drops is fine since the room for variation is still very small. Think of adding salt to a cake recipe—you can measure that in a “pinch” or two and it’s fine. But you’d never measure out all the flour for a cake this way! Since you generally need at least 30g of essential oil for a recipe of soap (the guideline is 30g EO per 500g oils), you really must use a scale. I think 30g is approximately 600 drops (though, of course, huge variation here), and counting out 600 drops of anything is not my idea of a good time 😛 You’ll need the scale for all your other soap making (precision by weight is SUPER important when you’re making soap, don’t even bother if you aren’t going to weigh things out as it’s just too easy to bung up an entire batch and have to bin it).

For lye, it just needs to be pure lye. As long as it says “pure sodium hydroxide”, or something to that effect on the label, you should be fine. Take care not to accidentally get a drain cleaner that contains lye, as they often have little shards of metal and other narsty stuff you won’t want in your soap hidden in them.

I have yet to find an essential oil you should stay away from in a soap for any reason other than I didn’t like the way it smelled 😛 I’ve never had an EO cause a batch to seize, either, which is good. My soaps usually contain lots of citrus and spice essential oils, and that’s mostly because they’re fairly inexpensive. I always buy the 100mL bottle when I know I’ll be using it in soap, and when that 100mL bottle is $1600+ (rose essential oil), well… yeah. No rose soap for me. Lemon, lavender, cinnamon, etc. are generally in the $5–$15/100mL range, and that’s far more reasonable.

Ok, I think that covers it all. Have fun! And remember, 3 weeks really isn’t that long when you get into the swing of things 🙂

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I’m really interested to hear what they told you in Esthetics school. It seems a lot of popular/common knowledge about skin care involves ditching things we’ve used for centuries—real soap, olive & coconut oil (oil of any kind, really), and anything that doesn’t come in a fancy bottle with a $40 price tag. As for soap nuts, I really want to try them! I’ve not find a place to buy them yet, but when I do, I am so giving them a go 😀

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Oh no! What a bummer! I am so surprised to hear that lye is illegal where you live. I know it can be hard to find (often requiring you to sign a waiver) because it is an ingredient in meth, but I haven’t heard of it being illegal. How sad 🙁 I have never tried making my own lye, but I know it can be done using ashes and rain water. You should definitely look into that, even if just to know how in case of apocolypse 😉 Or perhaps take a soap making vacation to North America? Ha. That would sure look funny on a visa application!

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Hi Kay—Sorry for the delay there. I know it can be easy to assume that bloggers don’t have a lot of other demands on their time when they post a lot, but sadly, I do 🙁 I’d love to spend all my days at home making soap, writing, and replying to comments and e-mails, but sadly, I am left squeezing that in around a more than full time job, friends, family, sleeping, eating, yoga classes, vacuuming, and life in general. For instance, I am writing this as I brush my teeth before rushing off to work. And hey, three weeks isn’t really that long for soap to cure, and 100% coconut oil soap (apparently) cures much faster.

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Hey Bea! Thanks for reading from the other end/side of the world 🙂

Soo… what, precisely, does the soap smell like? I have never, ever had a soap that I thought smelled of lye… mostly because dry lye smells like nothing, and once it’s wet I make a point of not smelling it, so maybe I just don’t know what it smells like. Can you give me a list of all the ingredients (and amounts) you used? Let’s get this figured out 🙂

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Yeah, lots!

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Hi Ebony 🙂 I’m thrilled I’ve helped ease your mind about lye and soapmaking! Lye is pretty cheap—it’s about $10/kg here, more or less. I buy mine 3kg at a time from Home Hardware… I think that’s about $25? It’s been a while. I haven’t had to buy more lye in a year or so, which gives you an idea of how much soap 3kg of lye will make!

You can use and fats you like to make soap as long as you can get a SAP value (the number that tells you how much lye that fat needs to be turned into soap). You should check out the four links at the bottom of this post for all my basic soap making info 🙂

Have fun!

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Thanks so much, Gable—I’m thrilled to hear I’m helping tip you over to the soaping side! Let me know when you get started, I’d love to see what you make!

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James—It appears you and I are defining “soap” differently. You’ll see quite clearly in this article I cite the definition as “Soap is an alkali (like sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide) combined with fats”. By that definition you indeed cannot have soap without a lye of some kind as it is one half of a two part equation.

You are defining it by the way in which it cleans, but (as you note), there are many, many ways to achieve what is effectively an emulsion cleaner. Everything from soap nuts to polusorbate-20 to sodium lauryl sulfate to your carrageenan & walnut mixture can create a (potentially lathering) emulsifier (or a surfactant) that will happily carry away oils and clean—but by the “fat + alkali” definition, these are not true soaps, but detergents. They act like soap, but are not technically true soap. You yourself call carrageenan a detergent, not a soap.

I do clearly discuss the availability and use of other surfactants to create a detergent that acts similarly to soap (did you actually read this article?). Admittedly I did leave out natural options. The purpose of this article, as noted in the opening paragraph, is to soothe worries of a finished lye soap being irritating, or dangerous. It is not meant to be a full overview of every surfactant in the world—simply an explanation and a jumping off point for those who are afraid to use lye.

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Greetings what’s your email? I wanted to see how you made your soap without Lye. Thank you so much!

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Ha—you’re welcome! Over a year of “but how can I make this without lye?” questions drove me to write it all out here, and now it’s one of my more popular posts. Explaining it all (especially the whole “the lye does not exist in the final product!” bit) does make one lament for the state of public knowledge of science, but it’s always good to know that people are researching things and trying to be safe. I LOVE your sandwich analogy, though! I will probably use it at some point 😉 Brilliant.

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Try explaining cohesion vs adhesion! 😉

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Hi Norma! I had to go do a bit of research to get an answer for you. Glycerin soap has always confused me as you cannot make soap out of just glycerin. Glycerin is mostly water, after all—it isn’t a fat. And you can’t saponify something that’s not a fat. The other thing that confused me is I was pretty sure that all homemade soaps contain glycerin. I confirmed that this is true. About.com outlines the soap reaction as “oils + lye (with some water) = soap + glycerin”. So… yeah. Confusing!

In the end, I discovered that glycerin soap falls into two categories. One is natural glycerin soap, which is more accurately called “transparent” soap as the presence of glycerin in a homemade bar of soap is nothing special. Apparently the transparency is achieved by making the bar as a hot process bar and “sugar and alcohol are added as “solvents” to keep the soap crystals from becoming opaque. Without this crystallization, the soap remains clear. You could take any of your soap recipes and adjust the process to make them transparent” (from About.com). So, natural, homemade “glycerin”/transparent soap really isn’t much different at all than straight up homemade cold process soap since it’s made with almost identical ingredients, and the process is very similar. It’s mostly an aesthetic difference. I also read that these bars cannot be melted down, meaning that all melt and pour clear/glycerin bases are not going to be homemade/natural.

After learning that I thought I best go look up the ingredients in a standard clear/glycerin melt and pour base to see the differences. And, I am sorry to say, they are stark and rather scary. I looked at this one from NDA. It is basically a bar version of the fake detergents I talk about in this article. It’s mostly water and glycerin, loaded with surfactants for lather (Sodium Stearate, Sodium Laurate, Sodium Laureth Sulfate), thickened and solidified with some highly refined fat-ish ingredients (stearic acid, lauric acid), held together with an emulsifier (Tetrasodium Etidronate), and then mixed up with some random ingredients like sorbitol (which is a sugar alcohol usually used as a sweetener in candies for diabetics), salt, and Pentasodium Pentetate (a chelating ingredient). YIKES. That is some serious chemical wizardry, and definitely not something I’ll be trying at home.

So, I suppose the gist of all this is that most glycerin soaps are not real soap—they are basically just solid detergent, faked together with a bunch of chemicals. Unless you’ve been using homemade hot-process soap that’s been processed with solvents to prevent the soap from crystallizing, you haven’t really been using glycerin “soap”, it’s sort of a glycerin detergent bar… which is obviously a far less sexy name, so you can see why the marketers decided to roll with “soap” instead lol 😉

Phew. So, all that said, the main complaint about the filmyness of traditional soap comes from using hard water (or, ironically enough, the never-quite-rinsed-clean feel of very soft water). The hard water can be an actual film, while the soft water thing is just the sensation of slipperiness without soap. How’s your tap water?

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Hi Caro! Thank you so much for your kind words 🙂 I hope someday you will be able to get the ingredients to do some of your own DIY products—unfortunately I do not know of any ingredient resources in Germany. Thanks so much for reading!

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Sadly no—they’re not even close to essential oils. As you noted, they’re alcohol based, and formulated for flavour, not scent. I’m not sure if they’ll effect the safety of your soap, but I would definitely recommend doing a pH check to be sure. You only want to scent soaps with pure essential oils or cold process soap approved fragrance oils (basically, read the reviews and see if anybody says anything about the FO causing their batch to seize). I always recommend essential oils, but there are some fragrances that are simply too expensive (rose!) or non existent in the EO world (coconut), so sometimes fragrance oils are a “necessary evil”.

Did you soap turn out well otherwise? You will probably find that any fragrance from the oil-based extract vanishes as the alcohol will evaporate off quite quickly.

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Thanks, Jan. Yes, this is definitely a conversational topic that just won’t die 😛 Of course I am glad that people are educating themselves about the dangerous chemicals in their lives, but too often there is no distinction made between dangerous-causes-cancer-with-constant-use (asbestos…) and danger-’cause-the-pH-is-low/high. I’m just happy to be able to help clear things up, though you are right, the missing piece is usually the “transmuted” bit of the reaction. Your analogy of a pot of boiling water or hot fat is a great one, and I, too, have given myself far worse injuries with hot water and fat than lye (including a second degree burn on my midsection from a spilled cup of just-poured tea—YIPES!). I do wish people wouldn’t make illegal drugs with lye, though—that does make it darn hard to get on occasion :/ Spoil-sports!

Enjoy that beautiful Aussie sun 🙂 I’m missing it like crazy these days.

Thanks for reading!

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I’ve definitely thought about it, but I do so love square bars 😛 Plus I’m having a hard time justifying the extra cost for a mould that’s only really good for one holiday since I don’t sell anything I make. Perhaps I will whittle some bars into hearts instead 😉

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Hi Maria! People used to make lye from ashes. Cool, eh? You can still do it that way if you find yourself in a post-apocalyptic situation and find yourself in need of soap or a drain cleaner 😛 Here’s an overview on how to do it yourself, if you’re feeling so inclined.

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The definition of soap is “a substance used with water for washing and cleaning, made of a compound of natural oils or fats with sodium hydroxide or another strong alkali”, and it does look like potassium carbonate has a pretty high pH, so I suppose this could work, but it does sound like potassium carbonate has the potential to be just as irritating as the hydroxides due to its pH, depending on the concentration of the solution.

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Glad to have helped, Dr. Brievil 😉 I’d recommend looking at yucca root and soapnuts for your lathering body cleanser, but truly, lye isn’t that scary and there’s just so much you can do with real soap—I’ve just learned how to make liquid soap and I’m just thrilled with it (and myself, haha).

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Hi Leanna! Welcome to the soap & lotion world 🙂 For coconut oil, make sure you’re not using fractionated coconut oil, which is liquid below 24°C. All coconut oil will be liquid in temperatures above 24°C. Fractionated coconut oil has been processed and doesn’t perform the same way in soap as it’s un-fractionated self.

I always just buy natural beeswax from local apiaries, and I love it. It smells of honey and is nice and smooth (no chunky bits of bee debris), and it’s wonderful for everything and anything I need it for.

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You’re very welcome, Kaia 🙂 I’m glad you found it! Good luck with your first batch 🙂 I’ve got instructions here, and my all-in-one soap is super easy for a starter batch as it traces quite quickly, even without an immersion blender.

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Happy to have helped, Maliha! Have fun with your homemade soap and thanks for reading 🙂

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Thanks for reading, Amu 🙂 As with all things that have a potential to be dangerous (like driving, for example), lye deserves respect, but not terror!

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Hi Mara! You’re right, some plants contain natural saponins, but that in no way means they are a substitute for lye. Think of it like this—when you make cookies, the recipe calls for white sugar (usually—go with me, here). You cannot just use anything else that has a bit of a sweet flavour instead, like a peach, and expect the recipe to still work, or taste nice. Just because they have a little bit of something in common does not mean one is an adequate swap for the other. You can boil soap nuts (and presumably soap wort) and get a sort of sudsy, relatively weak, thin liquid (sort of like bubbly tea), but that is not, and will never be true soap.

So, why don’t you want to use lye and make true soap?

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Hello! So, a few things:

• Yes, lye does sanitize, but that’s kind of a moot point here. There is NO lye in a finished bar of soap that has been made properly. You would not want to sanitize anything on your person with lye any more than you’d want to do that with bleach (OW!).
• There are two kinds of cleaning: physical and chemical. Physical cleaning is like alcohol, which physically destroys bacteria. This is basically fool proof as the bacteria cannot become resistant to being physically destroyed, and it’s also very safe. Chemical is like triclosan, which bacteria can develop resistance to (think being poisoned vs being stabbed), and it’s also a rather scary chemical for you as a living being.
• Soap does a good job of physically cleaning by carrying away bacteria with water. It is really very effective if you wash thoroughly with it.
• If that’s not enough for you, an alcohol powered hand sanitizer is the most sure-fire way to kill lots of bacteria without exposing yourself to hazardous chemicals and contributing to resistant bacteria strains.

Hope that clears everything up!

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🙂 Welcome!

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So happy to help! Thanks for reading 🙂

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I’m so glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for reading 🙂

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Hi Asaah! Burnt plant matter (ashes, roasted cocoa pods, etc.) provide us with potassium carbonate, another strong base that functions as lye. It’s not quite as strong as NaOH or KOH, and doesn’t provide the consistent results that the hydroxides do, but it is still technically a form of lye 🙂 You can read more here.

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Well, you wouldn’t want to put it on your skin—but I’m not asking you to 🙂

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Thanks for reading, Meryl!

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I would love to see some sources on this 🙂

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Thanks, Dawn! I certainly understand your frustration :/ Perusing labels at farmers markets often frustrates me.

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It might be African Black Soap. That is a soap that is made without lye. Literally no lye ever in the process. But it is extremely rare to find in the States and I’ve never found it home made here. Not that it probably isn’t home made here somewhere but it’s more common in Ghana and Nigeria where it originated. And it literally is made with no lye at any point in the process.

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Hmm. What was your superfat percentage? I’ve never had this happen with any of my soaps—even the ones I took to Costa Rica, though that was only for a month. Did everything seem fine before you headed home? Did they pass the zap test?

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Burnt plant matter (ashes, roasted cocoa pods, etc.) provide us with potassium carbonate, another strong base (alkali) that functions as lye. It’s not quite as strong as NaOH or KOH, and doesn’t provide the consistent results that the hydroxides do, but it is still technically a form of lye 🙂 You can read more here.

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“Lye” can be taken to mean “a strong alkali solution”: we’re talking strong alkalais/bases. Predominantly NaOH or KOH these days, but there are other bases (like potassium carbonate, historically derived from ashes) that do work, though not as well.

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If you’d like to learn more about how to make soap using ash, check out this forum post 🙂

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I admire your dedication to saving water 🙂 Functionally, bar soap and liquid soap are almost identical; the only core differences are the base used (sodium hydroxide vs. potassium hydroxide), and the fact that liquid soap is diluted before use, while bar soap is diluted at the moment of use. I’m certain one could wash up with just as little water with bar soap if desired; liquid soap simply already has the water added, but that amount need not be very different from what one uses with bar soap. I’d also say that if your bar soap is blocking drains, it is poorly formulated and/or being used to excess. Any typical use amount of bar soap will self-emulsify with water, just like liquid soap, and wash straight down the drain. If one is using a very soft bar of soap, though, it can be easy to get a big glob and use far more than can easily dissolve, and I can definitely see that clogging drains eventually—but the same could really be said of sending big globs of anything down a drain!

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I googled “how is sodium hydroxide manufactured” and got quite a lot of useful results—I’d probably start there 🙂

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I’ve been making soap for years, too, and I am not covered in scars. I’m also not sure how you are interpreting “treat lye like bleach” as being nonchalant. How are you working with bleach? Additionally, there is nothing special whatsoever about vinegar when it comes to neutralizing lye. It’s acid, lye is basic. Anything acidic will have a similar effect.

Most expert soap makers I respect specifically advise against using vinegar to rinse of NaOH, as does the MSDS sheet and basic chemistry knowledge:

• Soap Queen
• Love the Way You Lye: You Can Use Lye Without Burning Yourself Silly
• Addition to VINEGAR SHOULD NEVER BE USED TO NEUTRALIZE A LYE BURN!
• Soapmakers: Why You Shouldn’t Use Vinegar if You Come into Contact with Lye

From Brambleberry: “Adding vinegar (an acid) to lye (a base) creates a chemical reaction that releases more heat. Additionally, the act of putting vinegar on a lye burn hurts. Just use water as the MSDS sheet suggests.”

On the chemistry: “Rinsing it with vinegar (acetic acid, CH3COO-H or H-Ac for short) will neutralize it, though this is also exothermic. The reaction is:

Na-OH + H-Ac –> H2O + Na-Ac

(actually, it’s Na+ + OH- + H+ + Ac- –>H2O + Na+ + Ac- )

This will happen very fast, and produce a lot of heat, which will cause burns. So the best way is to rinse as much of it off quickly with water and then neutralize the tiny bit that’s left with vinegar.” (thank you Trisha Magistro for letting us reprint your chemical reaction equation here).
So, using Water (H2O) is what is recommended for cleaning up lye spills. Vinegar is not recommended on the MSDS.” (from the third link in the above list).

Short story: using vinegar on lye makes the burn worse because it creates an exothermic reaction because you are combining an acid and a base. You’re basically creating a small turbo-charged baking soda/vinegar volcano on your skin. It’s irresponsible to advise people to do so, so I don’t.

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Thank you for the heads up! I must’ve changed the URL at some point—I’ve created a re-direct so that should fix things 🙂

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