Coming Clean: The Truth About SoapWritten by Chere Deshayes
Coming Clean: The Truth About Soap What Is Soap? Soap is oldest cleanser around. It is created by a chemical reaction between oils, water and lye. Although lye is used to make soap there is no lye left after saponification (the chemical reaction that makes soap) is complete. There is no such thing as a bar of soap that was made without use of lye. Different kinds of soap are made using a variety of different oils. Both animal & plant oils can be used in soap making process, each adding different qualities to soap. Conventional Bar Soaps Much of soap available in store today is not really soap at all, but a detergent. Detergents are a petroleum based product, like gasoline and kerosene. Have you ever noticed how regular soap leaves your skin feeling dry, itchy and tight? Alkali, most common irritant in soap is often culprit. Others ingredients in mass-marketed soap have been proven harmful to human health and can cause severe skin irritations in some people. These include ingredients such as DEA, Isopropyl Alcohol, BHT and Triclosan (commonly found in anti-bacterial soap). The most common ingredient in conventional bar soaps is sodium tallowate. It is natural product of combining tallow, or beef fat, with lye. The attractiveness for tallow for mass producing soap is that it processes quickly, produces a hard bar of soap and is cheap and plentiful. The New Bar On The Block While there is nothing new about handmade soap, its popularity is growing rapidly. The sales of handmade soap continue to grow as part of society’s movement toward buying products that are healthy and good for environment. With ever increasing use of synthetic chemicals and studies about their dangerous effects, consumers are on lookout for more “green” alternatives. Benefits Of Handmade Soap
| | What's the truth about cell phones and your health?
Written by Arnie Jacobsen
eems that with every new advance in technology a question arises about its long term health effects. The cellular phone has not escaped question. Indeed there are those that firmly believe that using cellular phones causes brain damage. Linking cell phones with cancer has been a hot topic for some time, said Rob Denell, director of Kansas State University's Terry C. Johnson Center for Basic Cancer Research. "This has been a very controversial area for some years now and a number of people have tried to file suits against cell phone companies claiming cell phone radiation-induced cancers," he said. "The consensus in field has been that there is no credible link between cell phone usage and cancers." Studies have been conducted in various countries around world exposing lab rats to radiation levels similar to microwaves found in cell phones, and upon examination, were found to have brain cancer. This study has never been replicated however, and has not been published in any mainstream cancer journal.
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