Plastics in medicine and lifescience
Last edited: | Sustainability - Back to overview
Greiner Bio-One develops medical products made of plastic for clinical diagnostics, the pharmaceutical and diagnostic industry and biotechnology. Did you know that only 2-3 % of the world's production of plastics is in the field of medicine and medical technology, but over 50 % of medical-pharmaceutical products are made of plastic? This makes it one of the most widely used materials in medicine, medical technology and research, and there are many reasons for this.
Plastic – The material of choice in medical technology
Inside the Lab
“Have you ever wondered what really makes laboratory products so special and why they cannot simply be made from recycled plastic or other materials?”
The answer lies in the particular requirements and properties that we demand of our laboratory consumables. When carrying out scientific experiments, total accuracy and reliability of the results are paramount. The most important prerequisite for reliable laboratory products is the purity of the raw materials used in their manufacture: The more impurities that a plastic material contains, the more these will be able to leach from the polymer into the research sample.
Leachables is a term used for compounds which under normal environmental conditions during the shelf life of a product will be dissolved out of packaging materials, coatings or closure mechanisms.
In the process, these impurities can have a number of undesirable effects on analytical results. They may have toxic effects on cell cultures, leading to disruption of cell growth or differentiation or even to cell death.
So it is not just the avoidance of impurities, but also optical clarity and consistent mechanical properties that count among the most important requirements that laboratory consumables must satisfy and which are vital for many research applications. These properties frequently cannot be guaranteed to the necessary extent if recycled materials are used. Such items are more susceptible to
- false-positive or negative results
- errors in forensic investigations
- incorrect medical diagnoses
and therefore do not deliver the constant and reliable results needed in research.
It is for this reason that as a manufacturer of plastic laboratory consumables we select production materials with minimal additives. This allows us to guarantee the high degree of reliability and reproducibility that are essential in research applications.
