Is Irish Spring Soap Toxic? (ANSWERED)

Yes, Irish Spring soap can be toxic, but in general, it is unlikely to hurt you.

Let us explain.

Is Irish Spring Soap Toxic? (EXPLAINED)

Toxicity

Let’s first talk about what it means for something to be toxic.

The general accepted meaning/definition of a toxic substance to be one that could cause significant bodily harm.

Under this definition, just about every substance known to man could cause bodily harm.

This includes many products and substances that we consider to be non-toxic and unlikely to cause any harm.

Like water, for instance.

Vitamins.

Foods that we eat every day.

What Is Irish Spring?

Irish Spring is the name of a common (and pretty cheap) soap sold in most grocery stores and big box shopping centers (like Target, Walmart, etc) in the United States.

Irish Spring is sold in a solid bar form, as well as in a liquid bath gel.

Irish Spring contains many familiar ingredients, such as water and glycerin.

It also contains chemicals such as pentasodium pentetate, sodium tallowate, and sodium cocoate.

If you want to look at the ingredients from the Colgate-Palmolive Company Safety Data Sheet, you’ll find it here.

If you were to take any one of these ingredients, you could do harm to yourself with them.

Some of these ingredients can but put on your skin without issue, while others could cause irritation or even chemical burns.

Some of these ingredients you could consume without issue, while others would make you extremely sick.

Some of these ingredients, if you were to cut them or grind them up and breath them, could be really damaging to your lungs.

Lucky for us, we don’t eat pentasodium pentetate or drink sodium cocoate.

What Are The Purposes of The Ingredients in Irish Spring Soap?

While some of the ingredients have really scary sounding names, they do have a purpose in the product (and are used a lot in many products on the shelf at your store).

Sodium chloride is often used to maintain the consistency of the soap.

Coconut acid is used to leave the skin feeling smooth.

Hydrogenated tallow fatty acid is an emollient, meant to soften the skin.

Chromium oxide greens give the soap its color.

Pentasodium pentetate is a commonly used chemical that helps keep the soap water soluble by preventing some of the materials from bonding to each other.

Sodium tallowate helps with the cleaning.

People who are just learning about the ingredients might be surprised to learn for the first time that the soap is made from ingredients derived from animals, but that in itself doesn’t make the product toxic.

Is Irish Spring Too Toxic To Use?

While Irish Spring may be made of a lot of chemicals you wouldn’t want to take a bath in, the brief interaction of putting the product on your skin for washing is unlikely to cause you serious or significant bodily harm or even death.

You might experience skin irritation, or eye irritation.

But unless you attempted to do something with the product contrary to what and how it is meant to be used, it isn’t going to cause you serious physical harm (or death).

To avoid causing yourself serious physical harm with this soap, don’t eat it, drink it, put it in your eyes or mouth, or leave it on your skin for an extended period of time.

And before you start on me about the need to use the soap in a reasonable manner (isn’t the fact that you can’t put it in your eyes a sign that it is toxic?), let me remind you that there are many foods which we regularly consume that we do not recommend putting in your eyes, such as onions, chili peppers, or raw meat.

We certainly wouldn’t want to rub our skin with the hot of hot/spicy chili peppers, or sit in a bath where chili peppers had also been soaking.

Like we said at the beginning of this article, if you use Irish Spring as it is meant to be used, you are unlikely to suffer any harm of any kind.