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Optical Brighteners Optical brighteners, also called optical bleaches or fluorescent whitening agents, are a group of colorless, fluorescent chemicals that absorb ultraviolet light and emit it back as visible blue light. This blue light masks any yellowing that may be present in the treated material and makes it seem brighter and whiter than it would otherwise naturally appear to the eye.1Optical brighteners are added to detergents in amounts up to 0.2%2 in order to counter the natural yellowing experienced by fabrics as they age and to create an enhanced “whiter-than-white” surface that consumers perceive as ultra clean. These chemicals are little more than a special effect of sorts for household laundry; one that doesn’t get clothes any cleaner but simply makes them look that way. While this is generally harmless as far as our laundry is concerned, optical brighteners are less than benign from an environmental perspective. Many of the chemicals in this category are toxic to fish and other aquatic life. Some are also capable of causing mutations in bacteria. Compounding these problems is the fact that optical brighteners are also very slow to biodegrade into their less harmful component parts. This means that once they are introduced into local waterways via household wastewater, they will remain there as pollutants for some time.3 In terms of human health, exposure to optical brighteners, which remain on laundry by design, can cause eye irritations and skin reactions in sensitive individuals.
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