• Question: what ingrediants are in stain removers

    Asked by jjfarooq to Dalya, Derek, Sarah, Tim, Tom on 19 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Tim Millar

      Tim Millar answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      Usually nasty chemicals like acids (citric acid) and peroxides. Teeth whitener has peroxide, the stuff that can bleach hair blonde to remove stains like coffee and blue berry juice. Essentially they bleach the pigments in the stain and make teeth look whiter

    • Photo: Sarah Thomas

      Sarah Thomas answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      These are some of the common ingredients in stain removers:

      1) Surfactants – Improves the ability of water to solubilse common stains (like fatty stains)
      2) Enzymes – Protease enzymes aid in breaking down complex protein stains such as grass and blood.
      3) Sodium carbonate – Makes the water alkaline (most cleaning products are alkaline)
      4) Oxygen bleach – Makes whites whiter!
      5) Stabilisers – Increases the lifetimes of the soapy suds.
      6) Preservatives – To prolong the colour of fabrics.
      7) Fragrances – To make it smell nice.

      For more specific info, just read the labels 🙂

      Correction (thanks Derek!) 4) Oxygen bleach – makes whites *brighter! 🙂

    • Photo: Derek McKay-Bukowski

      Derek McKay-Bukowski answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      Sarah has a comprehensive list, although I’ve slight clarification to make:

      Oxygen bleach is sodium percarbonate (I had to look that up) that dissolves in water to release hydrogen peroxide, which is a bleach. It certainly makes things white, by bleaching out the colours (i.e. stains). However it does not make them white than white.

      The “whiter than white” concept (and this is the bit I knew about) is based on the physical property of fluorescence (which is a quantum effect). Fluorescence is where a substance absorbs light at one frequency and then re-emits it at a lower frequency. There are some chemicals (called “brighteners”) which absorb UV light, and then re-emit it in the visible part of the spectrum.

      So, what happens is that you get some white light that reflects of the clothes as white, but you also get some UV light, which is absorbed by the brightener chemical, and is them re-emitted in the white part of the spectrum. So you get more white… hence the “whiter than white” advertising slogans.

      This is the same reason why some clothing will show up as a bluey-purply colour in UV light.

    • Photo: Tom Crick

      Tom Crick answered on 19 Jun 2011:

      Further to some excellent answers here, you have to be very careful about what you use to remove stains from certain materials, as many peroxides/commercial stain removers will damage them.

      From doing years of karate and rugby, I always knew how to remove blood from a white kit: soak it in cold water as soon as possible!

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