Water is a solvent. Not sure where you get that it's not.

From the closing of the first graph in the Wiki for water: Due to its presence in all organisms, its chemical stability, its worldwide abundance, and its strong polarity relative to its small molecular size, water is often referred to as the "universal solvent"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water

Edit: after enough searching I was finally able to find this article [0] that I was originally trying to find. The leaching part was right, but the bleaching part looks to have been as misremembered

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/super-kamiokande-neutrino-de...