Why does hydrogen peroxide bubble when you put it on an open sore? Please explain in biological terms?

Answer 1

It has strong oxidizing properties and is therefore a powerful bleaching agent that has found use as a disinfectant and as an oxidizer.

Oxidising agents act by oxidising the cell membrane of microorganisms, which results in a loss of structure and leads to cell lysis and death.

* Hydrogen peroxide is used in hospitals to disinfect surfaces. It is sometimes mixed with colloidal silver. It is often preferred because it causes far fewer allergic reactions than alternative disinfectants. Also used in the food packaging industry to disinfect foil containers. A 3% solution is also used as an antiseptic. When hydrogen peroxide comes into contact with the catalase enzyme in cells it is broken down into water and a hydroxyl free radical. It is the damage caused by the oxygen free radical that kills bacteria. However, as recent studies have show hydrogen peroxide to be toxic to growing cells as well as bacteria, its use as an antiseptic is no longer recommended.

Answer 2

The reason why it foams is because blood and cells contain an enzyme called catalase. Since a cut or scrape contains both blood and damaged cells, there is lots of catalase floating around.

When the catalase comes in contact with hydrogen peroxide, it turns the hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) into water (H2O) and oxygen gas (O2).

Catalase does this extremely efficiently -- up to 200,000 reactions per second. The bubbles you see in the foam are pure oxygen bubbles being created by the catalase. Try putting a little hydrogen peroxide on a cut potato and it will do the same thing for the same reason -- catalase in the damaged potato cells reacts with the hydrogen peroxide.

Hydrogen peroxide does not foam in the bottle or on your skin because there is no catalase to help the reaction to occur. Hydrogen peroxide is stable at room temperature.

Answer 3

reaction with catalase
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