How does bleach destroy viruses?

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Srdjan Tufegdzic Popular answer

Bleach is oxidant of organic molecules. Therefore it can kill practically any organic life form if concentration is high enough. However capacity of bleach to kill organic life forms depend heavily on concentration of other organic substances in solution as those substances deplete bleach concentration due to their oxidation. So it can kill viruses but it is unclear about what concentration range are you talking about and in what environment.

Srdjan Tufegdzic

Andrew Octavian Sasmita

Various chlorine-based bleach employs molecules such as free chlorine which have been observed to induce damage in viruses at replication and injection stages through disruption of genome and protein functions. Such effects were shown in the article attached to be comparable to the effects of UV radiation and singlet oxygen as means to inactivate viruses.

Article Virus Inactivation Mechanisms: Impact of Disinfectants on Vi...

Laurent Moulin

Let me add their is a some difference between action of UV and action of chlorine, since chlorine start by oxidizing the capside of virus, and destroying proteic envellope but UV start to induce genom destruction. Like indicated before presence of other substance can lead to depletion of active chlorine. But other mecanisms can be observed since interaction between virus and organic compound is just starting to be described (see our last paper : Waldmann and al, EST 2017)