Academic Reading
The story of soap
ASoap is one of the oldest cleaning products, with recipes recorded on clay tablets in ancient Babylon around 2800 BCE. It is made by combining fats or oils with an alkali, a reaction that produces a substance able to lift grease and dirt away in water.
BFor much of history soap was a luxury, but as it became cheaper it played a huge role in public health. By making it easier to wash hands and clothes, soap helped to reduce the spread of many diseases, a benefit that scientists only fully understood in the nineteenth century.