I’ve recently been really into laundry, and this topic came up. I messaged GEC last year about using Oxiclean on Silverescent-treated Swiftlys. They discourage it, but didn’t give a reason why. After some digging and hints from the current r/laundry guru, I found laundering instructions for X-Static fabric: https://arc-com.com/X-STATIC/_Cleaning.pdf . It’s assuming the fabric is used in a medical setting (they were originally marketed for curtains in hospitals), but I assume all the tips still hold. Some of the recommendations:

• Detergent with a maximum pH not to exceed 12. (Of the common laundry boosters, this eliminates ammonia and washing soda / sodium carbonate.)
• Oxidative bleaching agents should not be used as these will damage X-Static silver antimicrobial fiber. These include sodium hypochlorite (household bleach), hydrogen peroxide, and per(oxy)acetic acid (PAA).
• A thorough rinse is essential to remove traces of surfactant, as residual detergent will adversely affect the X-Static silver antimicrobial.
• Fabric softeners, oxidizing agents (this includes Oxiclean / oxygen bleach / color-safe bleach / sodium percarbonate), and strong acids should not be used.

I also found a paper where they compare the effect of liquid and powder detergents when washing silver-plated textile electrodes: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7146542/ . Interesting takeaways:

• Washing with powdered laundry detergent containing bleaching agents or just sodium percarbonate alone caused significant damage within 30 washes. (Most powdered laundry detergents contain sodium percarbonate.)
• They recommend liquid laundry detergents since those can’t contain bleaching agents.
• Just washing with water resulted in a little bit of damage, so they recommend washing on a delicate cycle.
• Just soaking with bleaching agents also resulted in some damage, although less than washing with just water.
• Any silver that comes off the clothing goes into wastewater which has negative effects on the environment.

Moving forward, this will be my laundry routine:

1. Pretreating silver-infused fabric with liquid laundry stain removers first if needed. If two rounds of liquid stain remover doesn’t work, I would be willing to do a very long soak in Oxiclean/powdered laundry detergent (this might be risky).
2. Using liquid laundry detergent, no laundry boosters, no fabric softener. I use a tiny bit of citric acid instead of fabric softener, but this post shows that it’s not a strong acid.
3. Washing on a cold, delicate cycle. If necessary, wash on warm with extra rinses.
4. Line-drying whenever possible.

I’m far from an expert, but I just wanted to let people know! I hope this was helpful. And if anyone knows more than I do I’m happy to be corrected.