Now it, seems, readers also expect me to answer their questions, the latest of which comes from a Springboro resident.
“While showering one day recently I needed to get a new bar of soap,” he e-mails. “While opening the box I noticed that the end of the box was marked with an expiration date … why does soap have an expiration date? Inquiring minds want to know what happens if someone uses expired soap. Does it just not get me clean? Will it turn me bright green? Will it remove the skin and leave the dirt? Will it produce mutant soap scum, impossible to remove from the shower walls?”
These are, indeed, perplexing questions and just the kind I’d expect to receive from someone whose reading habits include this column and the ends of soap boxes. But, as a columnist whose attitude about facts is, “Either look them up or make them up, whichever is easier,” I may not be the best possible person at this newspaper to answer them.
Then again, expiration dates is a topic that is discussed frequently at our house.
My feeling is that expiration dates aren’t important and merely are put on stuff by companies because they want you to throw out perfectly good stuff and buy more of their stuff. A perfect example is salami, which, according to the note on a package I bought just a few months ago, no longer will be good by Christmas. But I’m not about to throw it out just because it’s a bit greenish.
My wife, on the other hand, is a firm believer in expiration dates. If the milk in our refrigerator has an expiration date of Sept. 17, at 12:01 a.m. on Sept. 18 it’s out the door. I could cite other examples of things like that she does, but I won’t because I might find out there’s an expiration date on our marriage license.
Fortunately, one of my many journalistic skills is the ability to Google. So I typed in the question about soap and found the answer on a website called ChaCha.com:
“Bar soap has an expiration date of up to three years. It’s not harmful if it expires, it just doesn’t kill germs as well.”
While on that site, incidentally, I also found the answer to another question you may be wondering:
“Is copper bad to eat?”
The answer, ChaCha.com says, is: “Yes, copper is bad to eat.”
Although a lot probably depends on it its expiration date.
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