"Nurses who knew what they were doing..."
Nurses used what hospitals/facilities supplied and or their education and experience told them was deemed proper. In the case of Hexachlorophene like so many other disinfectants,antibacterial products science of long term exposure took a back seat to the supposed benefits. It wasn't until newborn infants began to die after being bathed with soaps/cleansers containing the stuff and or rates of cancer became attributed to it that corrective steps were taken.
In general the medical community have found most all phenol derived chemicals are bad for humans. Some of the first "antibacterial" soaps such as carbolic contained phenols as did the most celebrated disinfectant "Lysol" band. The first has been banned in many countries and the latter no longer contains the stuff.
Housekeeping/nursing staff thought they were doing the right thing when cleaning down nursery equipment including infant beds with phenol based disinfectants, that was until an outbreak of baby deaths was traced back to the stuff (apparently cleaned items weren't rinsed and or retained enough residue to poison), and subsequently lead to it's removal from hospital use.
Oxygen bleach and colors:
In general oxygen bleach will not remove nor alter colourfast dyes. However repeated exposure especially at hot or boil wash temps and with activated products may cause certain textiles to fade over time. Many "colour safe/protecting" detergents such as certain formulas of Cheer contain small amounts of oxygen bleaching agents to counter the chlorine found in most local tap water.
Sanitising Laundry:
Know certain persons are tired of hearing this, but again many of my vintage laundry manuals point to studies/tests that were done when soap was main "detergent" for laundry day and bacteria removal from textiles. Long story short one or two washings in warm or hot water with enough soap and through rinses following left laundry pretty much "santitised". Later commercial laundry groups repeated the studies and came up with the same results.
The action of alkaline laundry agents (detergents or soaps), along with hot or warm water, and the mechanical action of the washing machine kill, inactivate, disloge or whatever you want a large portion of "germs" on laundry. Subsequent rinses go further and the upshot is while the germs may have been flushed down the drains alive they are off one's laundry and that is all which matters.
Subsequent machine tumble drying and or ironing further has a disinfecting action which deals with any remaining germs.
Henkel/Persil is not alone in worrying about the modern trend of cold/cool water washing and the spread of germs, but they are at odds with consumer groups and or governments that want and or indeed are mandating reduction in energy use for laundry.
en.wikipedia.org
