[gruez]

>Even the industrial chlor-alkali process just uses salt (NaCl) and water so it’s not artificial.

By that standard is anything artificial? Oil comes out of the ground, after all. At least with "natural" colors you can argue the actual molecule was synthesized by a plant and we're just purifying it, whereas for industrially produced lye it's entirely man made.

[dyauspitr]

Salt and water are pretty “natural”. You can get pedantic about this but there is enough here to classify these on a case by case basis.