Is dish washing liquid safe for cleaning an oven?

Question

An awful lot of grease fell into the bottom of my oven during its last use. Afterwards, it made sense to use Dawn to clean the oven, as it cuts grease so well. After I did that, however, I thought to worry about any ill effects of heating the oven. I did go over everything with a wet rag several times, and believe I got all the Dawn out.

Specifically, I used ultra concentrated Dawn dishwashing liquid which has no phosphates and which carries warnings to not mix with bleach. So, do I have anything to be worried about?

Answer 1

Considering the kinds of caustic chemicals in commercial oven cleaners (lye, KOH), I would have no fear of using dish soap. Theoretically soap bubbles can trap flammable gas, so it's good that you rinsed thoroughly, but it's certainly less dangerous than a pool of grease.

My experience has been that vinegar and baking soda are fairly effective for cleaning ovens, you might try those next time.

Answer 2

Dawn is primarily sodium lauryl sulfate (or sodium dodecyl sulfate), which is used in darn near every other soap containing product, including shampoo and toothpaste. It is a pretty good skin irritant, especially when dry, but....if you can wash your hair with it, I wouldn't worry about a tiny little bit left over in your oven.

As someone else pointed out, other chemicals used to clean ovens are major skin irritant, so Dawn is pretty mild by comparison.