OK so if I’m wearing a white shirt and I go roll in mud or get blood on it, or maybe dye, is the shirt ever truly clean of the stain?
If I use stain remover and there’s residual stain that just won’t go away, on a molecular level, is this still mud/dye/ink in the fabric? What IS a stain??? Do the molecules that make up the mud ever leave the shirt? Is there just forever molecular mud in your “clean”, but stained, shirt?
I’m not looking for cleaning advice, I just have a weird question!
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The answer depends on the kind of stain remover you use. There are two main kinds of cleaning products: ones meant to remove the stain, and ones meant to make the stain invisible. Most detergents are in the first catagory, and bleach and oxyclean are in the second catagory.
Detergents work the same way hand soaps work: by trapping dirt and debris in little molecular bubbles called a micelle. This helps dissolve things like oils that wouldn’t be able to dissolve with water alone.
The second class of stain fighters work using a class of chemical reaction called oxidation-reduction reactions (redox for short). Both Oxyclean and bleach (and probably other cleaners too, but these are the two most well known) work by oxidizing stains, which changes their chemical properties. The goal is to make them turn invisible, rather than remove them. Bleach is such a powerful oxidizer than it even destroys many permanent dyes (which is why you only use bleach on whites).
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