I’ve summarized some of the commonly available oxygen bleach products in the table below, and you can see whether they contain an activator or not. TAED (mostly used in Europe) activates percarbonate at 40C/104F, and NOBS (USA/Japan) activates at an even lower 20C/68F.īleach activators are commonly found in powder laundry detergents, but are quite rare in additives. To counteract this, bleach activators were developed. The lower the water temperature, the less effective it will be and the more contact time it will need. What exactly does this mean? On its own, pure sodium percarbonate requires temperatures above 60C/140F to be fully effective.
I’ve mentioned several times that oxygen bleach requires “warm to hot” water in order to activate and work properly. Oxygen bleach is a great additive for athletic clothes because of this, as well as cloth diapers and any other loads that are prone to leaving residual odors. In fact, Tide Odor Rescue pods use sodium percarbonate as the active ingredient. Oxygen bleach does not sanitize like regular household bleach, however it does have some antibacterial properties when used at regular laundry concentrations which is great for tackling odors. I had to do this a couple of times, but the stain faded almost to the point of not being visible which I consider a huge success! So I put the stained part in a bowl, poured some oxygen bleach powder right on it and then added boiling hot water – that way only the stained area was getting treated, not the whole garment. I was curious to see if sodium percarbonate would do the trick in this case. My husband had a uniform with a large ink stain that was several years old and had been washed and dried dozens of times. When you mix oxygen bleach with hot water that triggers the chemical reaction and it starts to bubble – a process that’s pretty cool to watch! But make sure you have plenty of room in your soaking vessel so that doesn’t overflow and cause a mess.Īnother way I’ve used oxygen bleach was for “nothing to lose” stain removal. One thing to note here is that even though oxygen bleach is considered color safe, I do not use it on dark loads.įor extremely tough stains you can do what I did with the pillowcase pictured above: put it in a dishpan, add oxygen bleach and hot water (I even poured in a tea kettle of boiling water – this is not an option for anything other than 100% cotton or linen though!), cover (I use foil for this) and let sit for several hours. You add 1-2 Tbsp of oxygen bleach (I prefer pure sodium percarbonate that I buy in bulk, but I’ll dive deeper into other options in a bit) to the main wash cycle of your washer, and enjoy clean, bright clothes. The combination of warm to hot water and oxygen bleach give you the most versatile stain remover ever. Let me illustrate with a photo that I’ve shown before: Not being a chemist I will put it simply: it keeps your whites bright, removes most stains and deodorizes your laundry in a safe and gentle way.
Now that the difference between household bleach and oxygen bleach is clear, what is it that oxygen bleach actually does? Here is a good link that explains the chemistry behind sodium percarbonate. It is also much better for you and the environment – I personally never use household bleach for laundry applications, but oxygen bleach is a staple! It is generally safe to use on a variety of fabrics, it’s septic-safe, odorless and it does not degrade fabric with use. Unlike household bleach, oxygen bleach does not have the same aggressive color removing action (hence the often found label “color safe bleach”), it is primarily sold in powder form and it needs warm to hot water to activate. The word “bleach” in “oxygen bleach” is a bit misleading since the active ingredient (sodium percarbonate/perborate) is much closer to hydrogen peroxide than it is to regular household bleach – sodium hypochlorite. Spoiler: I absolutely LOVE oxygen bleach! In fact, if I had to choose only one laundry additive to use for the rest of my life, that would be it. I’ve mentioned oxygen bleach in a bunch of my previous blog posts, but it has so many merits that I figured it deserved its own write up.
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