Quality Survey and Safety of Some Toilet Soaps in the Nigerian Market: A Case Study of B/Ladi, Bokkos and Pankshin, Plateau State.

Soaps are cleaning agents that are usually made by reacting alkali with naturally occurring fats or fatty acids. The reaction produce salts of these fatty acids, which improve the cleaning process by making water better able to lift away greasy stains from skin, hair and clothes. In this work, samples of ten (10) different toilet soaps were each obtained form the open market in B/Ladi, Bokkos and Pankshin. These samples were then analyzed for % Total Fatty Matter (TFM), % Rosin TFM, % Free Fatty Acid (FFA) (as oleic acid), % Free Alkali (as Na2O), % Chloride (as NaCl), % Unsaponified Fatty Matter (UFM), % Glycerol, % Total Insoluble, % Moisture, pH and microbial content, where the respective results obtained were 75.20 ± 5.25, 3.08 ± 0.58, 0.94 ±0.38, 0.22 ±0.40, 0.87 ± 0.42, 0.61 ± 0.32, 3.80 ±2.26, 5.68 ± 3.03, 9.63 ± 2.44, 8.19 ± 1.12 and negative results for the microbial content. Most of the products, although filled to some extent, were found to have high % Glycerol, % UFM and %Rosin TFM. Results were compared with the National Standards. It was discovered that the soaps worked on were mild on the skin of humans therefore safe for use since the result of microbial