Terminus_Est
Harmless
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Registered: 9-10-2012
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Clorox Bleach and Hair: What reaction takes place?
And before you make fun of me, NO, I am not entertaining the stupid notion of bleaching my hair with Clorox. *chuckle*
Rather, to see what happens, I recently cleaned out my electric razor and dumped all its contents into a small amount of bleach. Over a period of
time, all the hair dissolved and a milky white residue was left. But I've been curious to know what happens chemically to the proteins in hair upon
reacting with the bleach. Anyone care to explain?
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unionised
International Hazard
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There are probably lots of reactions.
This one probably features in the brew.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofmann_rearrangement
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xfusion44
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Don't know about reactions that happen, but I read that hair are made of about 91% protein, if this helps 
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confused
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bleaching of hair using hydrogen peroxide and othe oxidising agents
http://journal.scconline.org/pdf/cc1970/cc021n13/p00875-p009...
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PHILOU Zrealone
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Clorox bleach is NaOCl, NaOH and NaCl mix.
It is rather basic so:
1°)It will hydrolyse the proteins from hairs into separate amino acids.
2°)Disulfidic bridges will be oxydised to sulfonic acids or other oxidised sulfide varieties
3°)Free amino acids will eventually be chlorinated
R-CH(CO2H)-NH2 --> R-CH(CO2H)-NCl2
If you heat it a little eventually it will decarboxylate and form nitriles that will further hydrolyse to carboxylic acids derivatives...
R-CH(CO2H)-NCl2 --> R-CH2-NCl2 + CO2 --> R-C#N + CO2 + 2HCl
R-C#N -H2O-> R-CO-NH2 -H2O-> R-CO2NH4
PH Z (PHILOU Zrealone)
"Physic is all what never works; Chemistry is all what stinks and explodes!"-"Life that deadly disease, sexually transmitted."(W.Allen)
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