
If you just buy one ticket, your chances of winning the lottery are smaller than getting hit by lightning. This is sort of like winning the lottery. Fortunately, rancid oils smell terrible, so you wouldn’t want to eat them in the first place. And finally, when a compound slightly damages cells like this, it increases the risk of cancer. For another, rancid oils can contribute to oxidative stress, which accelerates the aging process. For one, as the oils break down, so do most of the vitamins. When food spoils in this way, it’s because of bacterial growth, and if you eat it, it will make you sick immediately! If you eat rancid oils, they won’t make you sick in the same way, but also, they are not terribly good for you. Rancidity isn’t the same as food spoiling, such as chicken salad left in a hot car for a week. Rancidity is a process when, over time, oils break down or oxidize. Does organic soap go rancid?Īnother factor in soap going bad is rancidity. You might be pleasantly surprised after a few showers. So if your soap doesn’t smell quite as strongly as it used to, you might as well take a chance and use it anyway. So as you use the soap, and these outer layers are washed away, you expose the inner core that still has plenty of scent left. I am guessing that in these cases, the essential oil has only evaporated from the outer layers of the soap.

On many occasions, I’ve noticed the old soap bars don’t smell like much, but as I use them, and as the bar shrinks, they begin to smell more strongly again. As soapmakers, we often take old inventory for our own personal use. There is one piece of good news about soap and essential oils.

Can I still use soap with no essential oil? But of course, there is only so much essential oil in each bar, so if you wait long enough, all the essential oil will eventually evaporate out. The particles of vaporized oil are what you smell when you detect the pleasant aroma of a bar of soap. Essential oils are distilled in a similar way to alcohol because they vaporize at a lower temperature than water. Another name for essential oil is “volatile oil.” “Volatile” means that it has the tendency to vaporize. It seems obvious that the scent evaporates out of a bar of soap as it ages, but have you ever wondered why that is? The most common natural scent for bar soap is essential oil. Why doesn’t old soap smell as good as it used to? The first way is that the fragrance evaporates out of it, and the second way is that some of the oils may go rancid. As soap gets older, there are two main ways it deteriorates. However, certain changes in a bar of soap make it smell less good and seem less pleasant to wash with. It should still be just as effective at cleaning no matter how old it is.


The short answer is no: if left undisturbed, bar soap remains soap for years. You might be wondering if soap can go bad like food in the refrigerator or if it can expire like old medication or other personal care products. This might be especially true for organic or handmade soap. You may have accidentally left a bar of soap sitting around for a few months or maybe even a year or more and noticed it doesn’t quite smell as good as it used to.
