Coming clean on bath soap.(Bath Soap - Test)(Buyers Guide)(Industry Overview)

Lather up in your morning shower and you'll face the day with "soft and silky smooth skin," "a healthy clean you can feel," even "an energy rush," soap makers promise. The ingredients they've packed into their products--including vitamin E, aloe, chamomile, and other botanicals--seem impressive and oh-so-natural. One body wash, Dial Spring Water Shower Cream, listed 30-plus ingredients on its label, among them aloe barbadensis leaf extract, cucumis sativus (cucumber) fruit extract, and nymphea alba flower (water lily) extract.

But when we had an expert take a close look at bar soaps, body washes, and liquid hand soaps, he pointed out that ingredients like these are typically present in such low concentrations that they are almost totally ineffectual.Cases in point:

Vitamin E (tocopherol). Often touted for its skin-healing properties, the vitamin E used in many soaps is more likely there to prevent off-colors or odors from developing. Furthermore, soaps frequently contain a form of vitamin E that's less effective than tocopherol, and in concentrations of 0.05 to 0.1 percent, it does little or nothing.

Aloe. Aloe is believed to soothe the skin. However, aloe gel contains a mere 0.5 percent of aloe solids; the rest is water. Soaps typically contain a scant 0.1 percent of this gel, meaning there's virtually no aloe at all.

And there's no way for you to tell how much vitamin E or aloe a given soap contains. Ingredients must be listed on the label in descending order of concentration down to 1 percent, but below that, they can be in any order the manufacturer chooses. So even if they're fairly high on the list, they may be present in minuscule amounts.

Humectants. Substances such as glycerin help attract moisture to the skin. They may do so in lotions that are left on the skin, but in products that are rinsed off--such as soap--humectants usually have little effect. Conditioners such as castor oil (ricinus communis) and cocoa butter are less water soluble and more likely to improve skin feel.

While manufacturers may be soft-soaping you by touting ingredients and their supposed benefits, our testing experience has shown that most soaps will get you clean and leave your skin feeling good.