How Does Stainless Steel Soap Work?

Stainless steel soap isn’t actually a bar of soap at all, but is instead a smooth bar made of stainless steel that is used to remove kitchen odors. Their primary use case is to eliminate unwanted smells left behind on your hands after working in the kitchen.

What is Stainless Steel Soap?

A stainless steel soap is simply a metal bar that has a shape similar to bar soaps. It is made of sand-polished stainless steel, which is heavy-gauge. You can use stainless steel soap to remove unwanted odors from your hand which you may have picked up while using or cutting vegetables, especially things like garlic, onions, and peppers, that tend to leave behind a very strong smell that normal soaps can sometimes struggle to get rid of.

These soaps effectively clean odors from items containing sulphur molecules such as fish, onion, and garlic.

How does stainless steel soap work?

A stainless steel soap works based on the chemistry between some food items and the stainless steel itself. Certain food items like onions, fish, and garlic may contain sulfur particles that stick to your skin while cooking. These particles are responsible for the strong odor on your hands.

When stainless steel soap comes into contact with these, they chemically bind to the sulfur molecules and transfer them from your hands to the bar, thus removing the odor off of your hands.

How to use Stainless Steel Soap?

Hold your hands under lukewarm or cold water at your kitchen sink and gently rub them against the stainless steel soap, similar to how you do with a block of bar soap. You can use it without water too, but the soap is less effective that way.

The mechanical movement of your hands rubbing on your stainless steel soap is vital in removing the odor here. In handwashing practices, vigorous scrubbing of your hands using a block of bar soap causes a thorough cleansing, and it should take at least 20 seconds too. 

The same rules apply in the case of stainless steel soaps. Thorough cleansing removes all the unwanted odors.

Why would you use stainless steel soap instead of a regular bar of soap?

Washing your hands in the traditional manner makes the odor from food items and cooking worse. This is because, upon contact with water, more sulfur molecules are left behind by items like garlic or onion on your hands. Thus it increases the intensity of the odor.

When you use stainless steel, on the other hand, its surface has a high affinity for sulfur compounds and nitrogen, and stainless steel removes these metal ions and removes the odor from the hands. For this reason, stainless steel is a better option than regular soap in removing odor from your hands.

What causes a strong odor on your hands when working in the kitchen?

Items like garlic are packed with sulfur compounds, which carry a characteristic smell. When you crush garlic, and their walls and insides merge, this causes a chemical reaction releasing ‘Allicin’, which is the main reason behind the strong odor. 

How does the stainless steel soap remove odor from your hands?

Stainless steel is an alloy containing iron and chromium. The layer of chromium forms an oxide on the stainless steel surface, preventing rusting. When you cleanse your hands using stainless steel, the chromium merges with the sulfur molecules. The sulfur gets transferred to the stainless steel soap bar instead of the hands, thus getting rid of the smells.