The synthetic chemical industry’s answer to soap. Made from petroleum derivatives and not as biodegradable as soap. May be very harsh and drying to the skin and hair. Toxic. Avoid.
Detergent (Wikipedia)
A detergent is a surfactant or a mixture of surfactants with cleansing properties when in dilute solutions. There are a large variety of detergents, a common family being the alkylbenzene sulfonates, which are soap-like compounds that are more soluble in hard water, because the polar sulfonate (of detergents) is less likely than the polar carboxylate (of soap) to bind to calcium and other ions found in hard water.
