Potassium Oleate

Potassium oleate is the potassium salt of oleic acid — a classic fatty-acid soap. In car-care chemistry it acts as an anionic surfactant that generates a rich foam and lifts oily and greasy soiling from surfaces. It is the same class of chemistry as traditional bar and liquid soaps, made by saponifying a plant- or tallow-derived fatty acid with potassium hydroxide, which leaves the finished solution mildly alkaline.

At concentrated strength it carries GHS skin-irritation (H315) and eye-irritation (H319) classifications, along with an acute aquatic-toxicity classification (H400) driven by the surface-active disruption of aquatic organism membranes. Those classifications apply to the raw ingredient; in a diluted leather-cleaner mixture the concentration typically sits below the thresholds that would carry those hazards to the product label. As a simple fatty-acid soap it is readily biodegradable and does not bioaccumulate or persist in the environment.