What You Should Know About Polymer Applications for Medical Care

It goes without saying that the medical community played the number one role in combating the coronavirus pandemic and helping to restore life to (almost) normal conditions. But one could argue that medical professionals couldn’t have done it without the help of polymer products.

Continue reading to learn more about how polymers and plastic thermoforming helped throughout the pandemic.

Medical devices made of polymers

It’s hard to look anywhere without seeing a product that’s at least partially made of plastic, especially in the medical community. While many plastic products played an important role during the pandemic, these are two of the ones that helped the most:

• Face shields: In addition to face masks, most medical professionals wore additional personal protective equipment (PPE), including polymer-based face shields, throughout the pandemic. These shields provide an extra layer of protection against germs; yet, they’re transparent to ensure patients get the care they deserve. The two main polymers used for face shields are Radel PPSU and Udel PSU, which are both widely used in the medical industry.
• Swabs: COVID-19 testing was a daily activity for medical professionals and workers in many other industries. The biggest problem with testing was the fact that facilities kept running out of testing equipment. That’s where plastics saved the day. Tests made of nylon and other polymers were quickly made and distributed worldwide to ensure people knew whether or not they had the virus.

Why are polymers chosen over other materials?

Production facilities utilized polymers over other materials for a couple of reasons. First, polymer products are fast and easy to distribute. Factories could rapidly manufacture face shields and testing swabs to get the goods where they were needed the most.

Polymers are also recyclable. Instead of manufacturing face shields from scratch, many production facilities made them from recycled goods. For example, plastic water bottles can be turned into face shields after a simple recycling process.

What does this mean for the polymer industry?

Because polymers are seen as an environmental hazard by many groups, the plastic industry as a whole has gotten a bad rap over the past few decades. But because polymers and plastic thermoforming have played such a crucial role in getting COVID-19 under control, we believe that these materials will be perceived in a better light moving forward.

With the more widespread use of plastic products, we’re confident that recycling will be more common and polymers will become more accepted in society. We also expect innovators to come up with new ways to recycle polymer products to help reduce the number of plastics that wind up in the dump.

Choose D&D Plastics for all of your plastic needs

When it comes to working with plastic, nobody tops D&D Plastics. We have decades of experience doing everything from designing plastic products to working on plastic thermoforming for all sorts of different industries.

Contact our team today to receive a quote for your next plastics project or to learn more about what we can do for your business.

Categorised in: Plastic Thermoforming

This post was written by Writer