DOS DOS DOS:(((

[katre]

Hello everyone, I've been making solid soap for a while, but in the last batch, a dos came in an unexpected way.
My soap in short;
Olive oil
Sunflower oil
palm kernel oil
cocoa butter
shea butter
coconut oil
Indian Oil
and I do it with ROE. I used lavender intermedia as aromatic oil.
Superfat 2%

In the same week, I made 3-4 different soaps by adding cinnamon, juniper tar, pine tar to the same recipe. But DOS did not occur in any of them.

About 3.5 months have passed since I made the soap. And with each passing day, the Dos stains continue to increase. But very interestingly, it occurs almost exclusively in the upper and marginal regions. It does not occur on large surfaces.

Any idea why only lavender soap does dos?

 

[ScentimentallyYours]

What is Indian oil? Do you know the percentages of fatty acids in the oil?

Was the Lavender an essential oil or fragrance oil? If an EO, how long ago did you purchase it? Had you used the fragrance without a problem in another soap, or was this the first time you’ve used it?

Essential oils can degrade quickly, especially if not stored in a cool, dark place. I believe Lavender is best used within a year. Sometimes EOs are adulterated, so it’s worth making sure you buy from a reputable supplier.

DOS working from the top down is interesting. Maybe @DeeAnna will have an answer. So sad to see this happen to your beautiful soap!

 

[DeeAnna]

Lavender EO will oxidize as it ages. Robert Tisserand, co-author of Essential Oil Safety, warns that older lavender EO is more likely to cause skin irritation due to the EO oxidizing. I have personal experience with lavender EO causing soap to go rancid (develop DOS) much more quickly than the exact same soap that was not scented with lavender EO.

I would not assume that lavender EO is the only EO that might trigger rancidity, however. I agree oxidized lavender EO is one culprit that causes DOS, but I suspect there are others as well.

DOS (distinct spots of rancidity) is often triggered by metal contamination from soap making tools and containers, the surface of the mold, dust in the air, etc. Perhaps something in your soap making process or work area is contaminating the exposed surfaces of the soap while it was in the mold? The contamination doesn't have to be visible to trigger rancidity.

Rancidity/DOS is hard to prevent, although I do my best to minimize the chance of it happening. I keep soap lightly covered as much as possible to protect against dust and handle soap only with freshly washed hands. I try to use plastic bowls and utensils as much as possible, bit when I have to use a metal item (stick blender) I stick to stainless steel. I use only distilled water not tap water. Etc.

In addition to all the precautions, I also add a chelator to my soap to clean up any metallic contamination that does sneak by. There are several chelators that work well for soap -- tetrasodium EDTA, sodium gluconate, and sodium citrate are three chelators that people on this forum often mention.

 

[katre]

What is Indian oil? Do you know the percentages of fatty acids in the oil?

Was the Lavender an essential oil or fragrance oil? If an EO, how long ago did you purchase it? Had you used the fragrance without a problem in another soap, or was this the first time you’ve used it?

Essential oils can degrade quickly, especially if not stored in a cool, dark place. I believe Lavender is best used within a year. Sometimes EOs are adulterated, so it’s worth making sure you buy from a reputable supplier.

DOS working from the top down is interesting. Maybe @DeeAnna will have an answer. So sad to see this happen to your beautiful soap!

Sorry, mistranslated. It's not Indian oil, it's castor oil. Yes, lavender is essential oil. It is waiting in a closed container in a dark place. How can I understand if an essential oil has oxidized? Color, smell etc everything looks normal

 

[DeeAnna]

Without paying an analytical chemistry lab to test your EOs, the consumer can't really tell if they're oxidized or not.

I can smell when lavender EO is oxidized, but that doesn't mean my nose is all that accurate. Maybe the odor comes only after the EO is badly oxidized. I have no way to know.

The best you can do is buy your EOs from reputable suppliers who have enough business so their inventory stays fresh.

And then store your EOs in a cool dark place -- a refrigerator is best for the more delicate EOs, such as lavender, citrus, etc.

When your EOs are older, use them in potpourri or room air sprays; avoid using older EOs in soap or in products to be used on the skin, such as a lotion or salve.

 

[ScentimentallyYours]

Sorry, mistranslated. It's not Indian oil, it's castor oil. Yes, lavender is essential oil. It is waiting in a closed container in a dark place. How can I understand if an essential oil has oxidized? Color, smell etc everything looks normal

I don’t have the ability to tell when an essential oil is still at peak quality. I confess that I don’t use essential oils often in soap. I tend to use them in room sprays.

@DeeAnna mentioned above a possible, contamination from dust in the air. I had wondered about that when I looked at your soap, because it appears that DOS is developing on the top half of the soaps. I’m not sure that explains, however, why it is only your lavender soap that is turning. Or perhaps it is only the lavender soap that is turning so far?

Since we moved into our house 36 years ago, our street has gotten busier and busier. It’s become a cut-through to avoid traffic on other roads. The rush hour traffic isn’t just noisy, the tires kick dust up into the air. A news story recently highlighted dangerous pollution from tires and brake pads, so I assume we are breathing in hazardous materials that could also cause DOS on soap. Any chance dust may be settling on your soap?

I’ve had good results using chelators. Here’s an article on DOS that appears to be the same as experiments in Kevin Dunn’s book, and it includes info on chelators.

Dust contamination . . .

 

[Savage Daughter]

Oh god, that's a LOT of soap to be losing....

Can soap like this be salted out or whatever by any chance? Or is it well buggered?

Just trying to think of a solution which would save the original poster from having to toss all of their soap.

 

[DeeAnna]

Salting-out doesn't remove rancidity.

It makes sense to me that DOS is currently developing on the lavender scented soap and not on the other soap without lavender EO. The lavender soap may have two triggers for rancidity -- the EO and metallic contamination -- but the other soap may have only one trigger, assuming the spots of rancidity are due to metallic contamination.

The OP may see DOS also develop on the non-lavender soap as more time passes. Or that soap might remain fine.

In my experience, rancidity started first on the soap I scented with lavender EO, then some months later the non-lavender bars from the same batch became obviously rancid.

 

[Savage Daughter]

Salting-out doesn't remove rancidity.

Good to know. I thought maybe the salt might have an effect, not necessarily to 'remove' the rancidity, but to neutralize some of what is going on. I will not be trying that if I ever happen to have this issue.

In regards to essential oils going off, I had only 1 bottle go noticeably off in all the decades I have been using essential oils, and I tend to have in excess of 100 bottles at a time because I use them in everything. Hair care, skin care, natural perfumes, first aid use, essential oil diffusers in my home, cleaning products for my home, you name it. And lavender is something I always have had on hand, no matter what as it's very versatile across the board.

The offender was a lemon 5 fold, which I never liked to begin with. It never smelled 'bad', so to speak, but it also never smelled like proper lemon from the time I first opened it. So I never really used it. At some point it just stopped smelling like anything. Have never bought a folded essential oil again since then. I got that one at New Directions Aromatics.

I hope @katre found out what's going on with those soaps so he / she doesn't ever have this happen again. I can't even imagine how I would feel seeing hundreds of my soaps that I love so much start going off like that

 

[DeeAnna]

@QuasiQuadrant -- Rancidity is an end result of the fat or soap reacting with oxygen in the air or compounds that contain oxygen. Salt can't reverse oxidation. You'd need to use a "reducing" chemical to have any hope of that.

 

[Savage Daughter]

@QuasiQuadrant -- Rancidity is an end result of the fat or soap reacting with oxygen in the air or compounds that contain oxygen. Salt can't reverse oxidation. You'd need to use a "reducing" chemical to have any hope of that.

Yep, the oxidation process I do understand. I'm thinking along the lines of 'neutralizing' the issue to prevent it from further developing, and then somehow using a process or substance to make that already formed soap base useable again, even if it isn't necessarily in soap bars. Perhaps a different product. This is a different way of looking at the issue. I'm not saying salting will work. I'm simply saying that SOMETHING might work. That opens up the potential of possibilities.

As I have been thinking about this today while putting up new fencing to keep the deer from pillaging & plundering my beloved plants, my mind kept going to the question: has anybody actually tried salting out soap which has developed orange spots? Has anyone tried ANYTHING in regards to coming up with an actual solution to this issue? And if so, what end result did they observe? If not, why not? Because they were told 'it can't be done'? That simply isn't a good enough 'answer' for me, because it's not an answer at all. That's enough for me to want to try it out & observe the results, and to play with it. If the end result is 'I haven't been able to figure it out', that doesn't necessarily mean it can't be done either. Regardless, I would learn a great deal in the process, adding to my personal knowledge base. I consider that growth. There is an answer to everything. Just because we haven't found it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist or can't be done.

There are many things that scientists & chemists still don't understand about working with 'natural' substances - as well as 'chemical' substances - and with which experiments have not been done because they too have been told 'it can't be done'. Soap is made up of nature-derived oils and butters, as well as manufactured chemicals. Experimentation along this vein needs to be done.

That's the only way that someone is going to figure out what options there are when something such as this occurs: if people keep trying various methods of salvaging batches such as this, someone will eventually figure it out. Often, it's those working hands-on in these professions, not those working in labs in a 'controlled' environment who find the answer.

So yeah, I am going to make a small batch of soap at some point, do my utmost to create orange spots - probably just use some rancid oils, simple enough - salt the soap out after things develop, then make new soap & maybe even something else from it & see what happens. The answer may be a completely different story if the spots are due to contamination with metal such as brass or copper, which might require a different solution. I will need to find some rancid oils to work with.

I was told I couldn't grow a garden on the solid granite bluff beside my house, 'can't be done' I was told by 'expert' gardeners who are only used to working under conditions they are capable of controlling, rather than working WITH the conditions they have. They don't know how to work any other way, which really limits their ability to think outside the box. Yet I now have a fairly big garden area on that same granite bluff It just took some innovative thinking & problem solving on my part.

Anyways, food for thought

 

[melinda48]

Oh god, that's a LOT of soap to be losing....

Can soap like this be salted out or whatever by any chance? Or is it well buggered?

Just trying to think of a solution which would save the original poster from having to toss all of their soap.

What does well buggered mean?

 

[Savage Daughter]

What does well buggered mean?

Basically, beyond any hope of saving