I'm surprised it isn't mentioned in the article, but you can get rid of yellow stains by putting your clothes out in the sun.
I'm surprised it isn't mentioned in the article, but you can get rid of yellow stains by putting your clothes out in the sun.
> “ After heating the swatches to simulate aging, they treated the samples for 10 minutes, by soaking them in a hydrogen peroxide solution or exposing them to the blue LED or UV light. The blue light reduced the yellow stain substantially more than hydrogen peroxide or UV exposure. In fact, UV exposure generated some new yellow-colored compounds.”
They did test with UV light. The sun is broadband (it will have both blue light and uv light) so it works to a degree. The insight is that uv generates some new yellow coloured compounds and only using blue light prevents this.
A light filtering glass cover that lets blue through but not UV could work for the while still using sunlight.
Was going to say. This is very well known way to get poo stains out of reusable nappies and baby wipes.
A bit of a naiive question, but does this age the clothing?
For instance "color-bleach" (which I guess is peroxide with other stuff) makes cloths disintegrate if used too often
In my experience no not really. I'm sure it has some effect but compared to chemical bleach or even just using a clothes dryer the wear is not noticeable.
When you do it with actual flax linen it is quite stiff afterwards and it may form permanent creases if you treat it in certain ways immediately after, depending on the weave. But that's to some extent always true with linen.
I'm not a chemist but my two cents because I studied a course of Industrial Inorganic Chemistry in my college. My professor of that course used to say Hydrogen Peroxide is a very strong carcinogen. So I hate every Tom Dick n Harry that yaps about the goodness of Hydrogen Peroxide on YouTube or elsewhere without mentioning that it will give you cancer even in small amounts. And yes UV disintegrates the fibres so the more you keep your clothes in the sun or in UV then they will look old. Source: I live in India with too much UV andif I keep anything under the sun for a couple of days then it looks old or atleast no more new to be worn fashionably.
Your professor was teaching Industrial chemistry. At industrial (undiluted) strengths, there aren’t many chemicals that can’t damage tissue or potentially cause cancer. Constantly breathing the undiluted fumes or other exposures will certainly carry some risk in an Industrial application.
Washing clothes in a dilute peroxide solution is not going to cause cancer, therefore simply walking outside to hang your clothes carries substantially more cancer risk than the use of Hydrogen Peroxide.
Saying it causes cancer in “small amounts” is a bit like shouting at someone that stepping on a twig is destroying the entire forest…while standing next to an inferno.
Do you wear gloves when you handle your H2O2 cleaning laundry solution?
I dont, but I dont care.
I’m neither ingesting, inhaling, nor bathing in it, so I don’t care either, nor would I be concerned to wash my hands in it were it needed. Just drinking water or being outside is more than enough exposure to cancer to be worried about.
Doesn't seem to be on the IARC's lists of known and probable carcinogens: https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/understanding-...
And yet local production of peroxides by inflammation is probably the causing agent most cancers.
Well, it's part of the cancer process; most cancers couldn't survive without it. But that's also true of, for example, local production of DNA, or anaerobic glycolysis, or angioneogenesis.
It's not true that if you expose tissues to lots of H₂O₂ they'll get cancer.
I'm also not a chemist... but I do have a PhD in mtls science from a top 10 program. My dissertation was on computational chemistry on organic compounds.
You're 100% right.
As long as the photon is energetic enough, it can cause a radical and therefore break a chemical bond.
Brighter the sunlight, more peroxides (or radicals) made, more damage to your skin or your cloth's fibers.
This is also why anti-oxidants are so effective at protecting the body, why inflammation is so damaging (body produces peroxides to eliminate what it believes is a threat), over consumption of food, too much/little exercise, etc. they all affect peroxide concentration or their halflife.
Nice to meet another Materials Science person. I only did bachelor's in Materials and Metallurgical Engineering. Hi:)
right, been glancing at this thread, and what occured to me is that blue light from LED's having a bleaching effect, specificly on yellow(cebum) organic compounds, then implys that it's not just(famously) hard on our eyes, it's frying them, and possibly worse. I certainly mind a brite screen, and keep it at the minimum level, except when in sunlight or useing my phone to show family and customers things. There are other effects to mass use of high powere LED's, where seagulls are flying around in downtown Halifax, NS in.the middle of the night, which I see now, but never happened with the old mercury vapour street lighting, which was it's own kind of wierd, in that it's bright yellow light from a distance, but makes everything under them monocromatic.IE: something in.the LED light wakes birds up.
What’s old is new again!
When I lived overseas my laundry was often dried in the sun and it’s amazing how fast the color is bleached out.
The sun isn’t a blue LED
Blue LEDs aren't magic. They emit a narrow bandwidth of light, and the Sun emits all of that bandwidth of light and more.
I’m aware… I think you missed my point
The number of commenters who think UV light is the same as sunlight...
lol, right?
probably useful if you live in Seattle though =P