We hear a lot about Personal Protective Equipment, or PPE, these days, because it is so vital to safeguarding medical professionals and patients.
While it may have taken a global pandemic for the term to become familiar to many of us, PPE has been protecting medical professionals from a range of health and safety risks since well before the COVID-19 crisis hit. But now, it's more important than ever that we ensure the highest quality PPE to protect healthcare professionals, and
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Safety web: Antioxidants for polymeric fibers
Personal Protective Equipment includes such things as surgical caps and gowns, booties, face masks, respirators and more. To make highly effective PPE, manufacturers use non-woven, or spunbond fibers, because their micro-fiber structure delivers the fine pore size that provides superior protection. Spunbond fibers can be layered to create a web, which makes them more effective for medical products. This microporous web is what filters out water vapor, viruses, bacteria, fungi and other substances that pose a risk to medical professionals or their patients.
Adding antioxidants is a great way to make manufacturing more efficient and improve the quality of the final product for polymeric materials of all sorts, from car components to consumer goods to wiring and cable, to name a few uses. For medical applications, antioxidants play an absolutely essential role by enabling the polymer to remain stable and sufficiently breathable, for better protection.
Stable and consistent: Antioxidants for polyolefins
When producing spunbond-based products through extrusion, antioxidants are used to enhance processing stability and fiber quality. Antioxidants for polyolefins and other plastics improve fiber consistency with less filament damage during processing. They also allow for smaller pores between fibers for more effective filtration, which is essential for medical applications. Without the use of antioxidants, it would be much more difficult to process these polymeric fibers and would result in shoddy products.
Form and function: Antioxidants for sterile medical applications
Another area where antioxidants make a big difference is in protecting PPE against unsightly yellow staining during shipping and storage. Yellowing can be a real problem, resulting in the perception of a substandard product. Antioxidants such as CYANOX 2777 have documented high gas fade resistance (resistance to color change). Their synergistic properties protect the quality, non-yellowing color stability, and performance of medical masks, gowns and other PPE throughout storage and usage.
Crack-resistant: Antioxidants for latex-related applications
Antioxidants are also critical for latex-related applications to reduce the risk of oxidation and improve durability. Latex is a key component in medical products like gloves but is prone to cracking and breaking. This is why polymer additives, especially antioxidants, are crucial.
We have all witnessed or heard about how high-quality Personal Protective Equipment, including surgical face masks, respirators and more, has been so vital in protecting medical professionals and patients during this trying time.
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