[Guestmodinfo]

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.

[therealpygon]

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.

[thrgfu568]

Do you wear gloves when you handle your H2O2 cleaning laundry solution?

I dont, but I dont care.

[therealpygon]

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.

[kragen]

Doesn't seem to be on the IARC's lists of known and probable carcinogens: https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/understanding-...

[thrgfu568]

And yet local production of peroxides by inflammation is probably the causing agent most cancers.

[kragen]

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.

[thrgfu568]

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.

[metalman]

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.

[Guestmodinfo]

Nice to meet another Materials Science person. I only did bachelor's in Materials and Metallurgical Engineering. Hi:)