The Bleaching Mystery

My son has been blaming our laundry maid for getting bleach spots on his favorite skateboard T-shirts. The laundry maid a.k.a. Dad claims he hasn’t been using beach lately. I started to wonder if our year-old front-loading washing machine was to blame. So, I dug out the 50-page instruction manual from our filing cabinet. Fortunately, two-thirds of it is in foreign languages. I found the troubleshooting questions that included “stains on fabrics”. Some reasons are not using HD detergent; using too much bleach or detergent; and iron in the water. None of those seem to be the problem although we considered getting an iron filter for our hard water.
Then, I was talking to my hair stylist about passing on clothes. My son’s T-shirts are not good enough because they are stained with white marks. She said, “Does your son use benzoyl peroxide on his skin?” I replied, “Yeeessss, he uses Oxy-10 for acne. Why?” She explained that she had the same experience with her sheets and towels when she was using it. You would think the product would have some kind of warning on the label, but it doesn’t. I looked up “Oxy-10 acne” online and found the phrase “may bleach hair or fabrics” and “avoid allowing this medication to come into contact with your hair or clothing.” This is a great web page that tells how to avoid bleaching: http://www.acne.org/faq.html#prevent-bleach. If only my son will follow the recommendations.
The mystery has been solved and the laundry maid has been forgiven.