Brown liquid

[El Pollo Diablo]

Women takes "clean" towels, puts bicarb, borax, oxi clean and water on them, and gets lots of brown stuff out.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/woma ... irror_main

Trouble is, it's almost certainly not getting bad stuff out of the towels, so what is it doing? Theories include;

Some argued the mixture had simply stripped the colour out of the towels rather than hidden dirt, writing: "It's a chemical that brought most of the dye out of the towels."

But one replied to say: "I've done it with pure white clothes and gotten this result."

So I'm going for the brown being a chemical reaction between the bicarb, oxi clean and borax. Anyone?

[bob sterman]

Trouble is, it's almost certainly not getting bad stuff out of the towels, so what is it doing?

The photo at the start seems to show that some of the towels were brown towels.

I can get blue liquid from blue towels, and red liquid from red towels - with no bicarb, borax, and oxi clean. Just hot water.

[El Pollo Diablo]

Someone got brown liquid out of white towels, so I'm guessing the various chemicals are reacting with each other. Could be wrong, but if they are I'm interested in what's going on

[lpm]

I suspect the white towels being used are actually brown, they just look white.

[Sciolus]

Or they're just lying.

[dyqik]

White cloth is made white by dying* it. If you bleach white clothes/towels/other, it'll go less white, usually towards a tan "natural linen" type color. Reactions of the white dye* could do things.

Also, strong chemicals may leach iron from steel or other washing machine components (if used), residue from elsewhere in the machine, or precipitate iron from the water.

[Bird on a Fire]

Maybe her towels had sh.t soaked into them.

Did she show both sides of the towels? Video won't load for me.

[Woodchopper]

Not the same, but it looks similar to the Ionic Detox Foot Baths which turned the water brown. As featured by the CHF in Bad Science, the brown discoloration wasn't due to wasn't toxins leaching out skin and into the the water, but rust.

[El Pollo Diablo]

Not the same, but it looks similar to the Ionic Detox Foot Baths which turned the water brown. As featured by the CHF in Bad Science, the brown discoloration wasn't due to wasn't toxins leaching out skin and into the the water, but rust.

Yes, that's what I thought of too. Am hoping for any kind of explanation of what might happen if one lobbed all those chemicals in together.

[shpalman]

Women takes "clean" towels, puts bicarb, borax, oxi clean and water on them, and gets lots of brown stuff out.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/woma ... irror_main

Trouble is, it's almost certainly not getting bad stuff out of the towels, so what is it doing? Theories include;

Some argued the mixture had simply stripped the colour out of the towels rather than hidden dirt, writing: "It's a chemical that brought most of the dye out of the towels."

But one replied to say: "I've done it with pure white clothes and gotten this result."

So I'm going for the brown being a chemical reaction between the bicarb, oxi clean and borax. Anyone?

POIDH with regards to it happening on white clothes.

In the original clip some of the towels are brown.

"bicarb, borax, oxi clean" means sodium bicarbonate, sodium borate, and sodium percarbonate.

Visible colours in chemistry usually come from transition metal complexes (the ligands split the d-shell) of which sodium is not one of them; visible colours in organic chemistry can also come from long conjugated carbon chains or rings, which is probably what the dye in the fabric is.

[AMS]

Boron itself is brownish as an element, but it's difficult to see how that mixture of oxidising of agents would lead the reduction of borate to the elemental form. Hmm.

[dyqik]

"brown" doesn't necessarily need a vivid color compound though. It's what you tend to get if it's not white, from scattering, absorption, etc.

[Bird on a Fire]

Given that my skin doesn't tend to leach borax, bicarb or bleach, does it really matter if some brown stuff (even if it's literally sh.t, the association with which is presumably why they chose brown) is technically inside my towel but immobilised to the extent that it doesn't get washed off with soap, warm water and vigorous agitation? Because that sounds a lot more like the conditions under which my towels will be used.

Assuming that this is a real thing, rather than fakery like 99% of viral internet videos.

[shpalman]

"brown" doesn't necessarily need a vivid color compound though. It's what you tend to get if it's not white, from scattering, absorption, etc.

Well then it could just be fine particles of calcium borate precipitate, or whatever it is that the borax does to hard water. But it's more likely to just be dull grey.