Was plastic tubing on your mind the last time you were either in the hospital or visiting a loved one? I know it didn’t register in my mind…“Hey, that flexible plastic tubing is helping my grandfather breathe”…as I held his hand and prayed that the seemingly inevitable wouldn’t happen after he had his second stroke. It is interesting, though, to look back and see how plastic tubing of pliability is used in medical and surgical applications. Now that I’m not overcome with such intense emotion, I remember that the nurses had to extract mucus from my grandpa’s throat utilizing a plastic tubing suction device. This gave him a little relief from all his distress while he was unconscious and helped keep his airways open, as did the tubing inserted in his nostrils and attached to the ventilator. Being connected to this life support machine, he was made comfortable by the morphine going into his veins. They upped the dosage being conveyed through the plastic intravenous or IV tube, and he slipped away and into God’s presence soon after he was transferred to hospice. [Continue Reading Article]

Few materials influence our daily lives more than plastic. As consumers, we don't often stop to think about how a huge percent of the objects we use are made from plastic. In my office alone I count 32 individual plastic objects - and that's not counting my pencils, pens and binders. Plastic manufacturers, however, must be acutely aware of the vast range of plastic materials and applications, as they are constantly designing and fine tuning new products with specific shape, strength, transparency and chemical properties. With the countless number of products - from disposable packaging to critical automotive parts - that can be made from plastic, it's no wonder there are such a wide range of plastic materials, all with a very distinct set of properties. Understanding the difference between, say, polyethylene and polyvinyl chloride is crucial for engineering products that will withstand their environments. Acrylic could never provide the strength and structural support of PVC, but polyvinyl chloride would be a clumsy and unattractive replacement to acrylic point of purchase displays. Let's take a look at the most important polymer types and their properties. [Continue Reading Article]