How plastic can rust, sort of
dfarq.homeip.net
dfarq.homeip.net
I was very skeptical, but I tried it out on my very very yellow Nintendo Famicon, as well as some smoker-teeth-yellow keyboard keys on an old Roland synth... left them out in the sun for a couple of days (2x3hours). It worked really well on both my test subjects! Certainly not perfect "retrobrite" white - but much better than I expected.
[1] skip to 2:45 https://youtu.be/xhBnyK5lQ2s
In a way, its good it works that way. It doesn't strip off the apple logo or "mac" lettering or whatever.
Your theory is reasonable but it seems its actually breaking down a bromine based fire retardant. Bromine itself is kinda gross brown color and some oxides like dibromine pentoxide are clearish-white so its quite realistic that hitting it with an oxidizer clears things up.
I wonder if it has anything to do with sodium perchlorate in the dishwasher tabs, the heat of the dishwasher or both.
TL;DR: Over time the bromine based flame retardants in retro-era plastics degrade (hence the yellow/brown colour) and H2O2 plus some energy (UV light/heat) can be used to reverse the process.
Interestingly, The idea that the yellowing is from the Brominated Flame Retardants in the plastic is actually itself a myth. It's a sort of believable just-so story because people look up bromine, see it is brown, and go "ah, makes sense". The interaction doesn't actually involve the brominated Fame Retardants, and is a breakdown of the butadiene chain of the plastic polymer which is effectively an oxidization which is catalyzed by energy (whether light (UV being the most energetic), or Heat). This happens with All ABS plastics, including those that don't have any Tetrobromobisphenol-A. This is why UV Stabilisers and absorbers tend to be a common inclusion in the formula of ABS plastic. (And why when they are forgotten/omitted you see things like car recalls due to seatbelt fasteners degrading). The yellowing is effectively the molecular debris from that breakdown, which gives a colour to the plastic. Hydrogen Peroxide is a strong oxidizer- it works in retrobrite not by reversing the process, but actually speeding it up. It reverses the colour change because while it significantly speeds up the butadiene being broken down, it also breaks down the molecular debris that results from it, to smaller, colorless compounds. It will also interact with other compounds in the plastic- for example, those that might have been added for the factory colouring.The result is that the colour of the original plastic returns- possibly without any factory set colouring compounds as well. Another downside is that because the butadiene chain is still compromised, retrobrite can never restore the structure of the plastic, so it will remain brittle. I've seen suggestions that an acid might be able to chemically recompose the butadiene polymer. I was able to successfully test a paste of Oxalic Acid, without any sunlight exposure for example- though it took a week and the colour change was very small.
This might explain why direct sunlight can brighten plastic instead of yellowing it even more.
Originally there was a lot of interest in restoring them to their original ivory-like color. If you search there's lots of advice on this, like exposing them to sunlight, or using UV lights and/or peroxides.
Eventually though I think there got to be an interest in the aged color, and interest in restoring the color declined.
I'm not a dentist, but I have family who are, and they explained similar processes are involved in teeth whitening. Basically a peroxide gel that gets put on the teeth with a custom fitting, and then exposed to UV light.
Field service people seem to kill laptops in a couple years, although we're talking about hours long process not years so that shouldn't matter, anyway I don't recall the exposed tops of their laptops being worse than the bottoms of their laptops.
The scientific debate about plastic breakdown seems to be over centuries vs thousands of years exposures so mere hours will be fine.
https://phys.org/news/2019-10-sunlight-degrades-polystyrene-...
I dug up my old duplo blocks from around 1980. Most colors are ok. The blue ones, however, have all gone brittle.
Is this normal? Why only blue?
person put a lot of work into finding a solution. Wish I could find the article. It was a great read - cleverness, hardwork and the scientific method.
Just leave it as it is. Yellow is cooler. It shows vintage class.
e.g., a very skilled art restorer can remove discolored varnish