[jondea]

I'm surprised it isn't mentioned in the article, but you can get rid of yellow stains by putting your clothes out in the sun.

[davidhyde]

> “ After heating the swatches to simulate aging, they treated the samples for 10 minutes, by soaking them in a hydrogen peroxide solution or exposing them to the blue LED or UV light. The blue light reduced the yellow stain substantially more than hydrogen peroxide or UV exposure. In fact, UV exposure generated some new yellow-colored compounds.”

They did test with UV light. The sun is broadband (it will have both blue light and uv light) so it works to a degree. The insight is that uv generates some new yellow coloured compounds and only using blue light prevents this.

[goda90]

A light filtering glass cover that lets blue through but not UV could work for the while still using sunlight.

[prism56]

Was going to say. This is very well known way to get poo stains out of reusable nappies and baby wipes.

[contrarian1234]

A bit of a naiive question, but does this age the clothing?

For instance "color-bleach" (which I guess is peroxide with other stuff) makes cloths disintegrate if used too often

[giraffe_lady]

In my experience no not really. I'm sure it has some effect but compared to chemical bleach or even just using a clothes dryer the wear is not noticeable.

When you do it with actual flax linen it is quite stiff afterwards and it may form permanent creases if you treat it in certain ways immediately after, depending on the weave. But that's to some extent always true with linen.

[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.

[refurb]

What’s old is new again!

When I lived overseas my laundry was often dried in the sun and it’s amazing how fast the color is bleached out.

[jama211]

The sun isn’t a blue LED

[IAmBroom]

Blue LEDs aren't magic. They emit a narrow bandwidth of light, and the Sun emits all of that bandwidth of light and more.

[533474]

The number of commenters who think UV light is the same as sunlight...

[internet_points]

probably useful if you live in Seattle though =P