How to remove deep iodine stain in carpet?

December 7, 2011 3:51 PM

How do I clean thick, dried povidone iodine (Betadine) out of a carpet? Is it possible without spreading the stain everywhere?

I have a bad habit of not unpacking after I move. It turns out the bottle of iodine in one of my boxes has been leaking, slowly, for the past few months. There's now a thick, hard stain of iodine in the carpet at the corner of that box. Am I in trouble? Is there any way to remove it without spreading it? Am I better off just covering it up and keeping it dry to keep it from spreading, and giving up some of my deposit when I move out?

posted by WasabiFlux to Home & Garden (6 answers total)

Try some peroxide and use paper towels to blot it. I am not sure if you can get all of the iodine out. You may want to put the paper towel on the stain then some newspaper on top of the paper towel folded over a couple of times and use the heel of your foot to press on it to get a good blot. You might want to try it a few times-pour a little peroxide on it, blot it as much as possible and repeat.
posted by Yellow at 4:03 PM on December 7, 2011

http://home.howstuffworks.com/how-to-remove-iodine-stains.htm
posted by theora55 at 4:14 PM on December 7, 2011

If it's really in there, you might need to buy some sodium thiosulfate from, say, Amazon or somewhere else. Most iodine stain removers out there are sodium thiosulfate in isopropyl alcohol or water.

Fun fact: sodium thiosulfate is part of the iodine clock reaction we all saw in high school!
posted by Fortran at 4:16 PM on December 7, 2011

Before you break out the solvents, have you tried getting rid of the thickest part with a credit card, dull flat blade, and then maybe an x-acto knife for precision scraping? I've never spilled iodine, but manual dry removal of thick stains makes them a lot less noticeable.
posted by aquafortis at 4:59 PM on December 7, 2011 [1 favorite]

I spilled some iodine on some very light colored laminate flooring and nothing was working (soap, straight bleach, ammonia, comet) and my sister suggested baking soda and peroxide. It was amazing! It bubbled the stain completely away. The pattern on the laminate was fine. If you have a light colored carpet, I'd give it a try. On a darker colored, you might use it as a last result since it might lift the color.
posted by stray thoughts at 10:36 PM on December 7, 2011

Response by poster: An update: OxiClean did wonders. I squirted some OxiClean solution (mixed as per directions) onto the stain and blotted it up, and repeated that several times. It took some scraping and rubbing to break up the solidified iodine, but it worked. The next day, some yellow/brown returned, but repeating the process just before cleaning the carpet with a RugDoctor got rid of the rest of it.
posted by WasabiFlux at 3:01 PM on July 16, 2012