What color is your health care?

Medical plastics have become a large part of one of the most significant global plastics markets. Medical colorants will be employed in a much greater percentage than would be found in the industrial markets.

Colorants must complement their base polymers through a myriad of situations, including:
 

• sterilization by steam, gases, chemicals, and
• radiation processes

Most people take medical plastics and their colorants for granted. However, if you are a medical plastics processor, you are aware of the strict regulations imposed on these materials. These regulations are imposed by the US FDA, USP, and numerous EU Directives, and the importance of meeting these requirements is emphasized in ISO standards. The colorants utilized must meet these same requirements. Also, they must not adversely affect the base polymers with regard to these requirements.

Colorants must be compatible with permeation requirements. They must also be secure from migration and resistant to a wide range of chemical, biological, and environmental factors.

Select commercial grades of medical colorants with various performance claims available in our database:

Compatibility with polymers

Fortunately for the medical product companies and through them us as the end users, medical-grade colorants are readily available for almost every polymer and compatible with every plastics process.  

Polymers may be compounded to meet exacting demands, and there is a host of medically approved masterbatch materials available. This allows producers the ability to leverage the material costs of natural resins and control inventory expansion.

As our leading generation ages and healthcare continues to become a dominant issue, we should all be thankful that the medical industry is not color-blind.

Select medical colorants that are compatible with various polymers available in our database:

Medical colorants serve in the most critical blood path applications as well as the most mundane, yet equally important, applications in the segregation of medical waste disposables. They provide essential safety, identification, and quality control benefits in the following areas:

1. Extruded medical tubing may be color coordinated with injection-molded fittings in devices delivering intravenous medications. Colorants often provide rapid identification for medications. This assures that patients receive the proper medicines in the proper dosages.
2. Many colorants offer the UV protection needed to ensure that our pharmaceuticals maintain their desired properties and extend shelf life. These same colors may often indicate when a certain pharmaceutical is out of date or has reached an expiration point.
3. In the operating theater, colorants are employed as identifiers for various disposable surgical instrumentation packages. This enables the surgeon to have the proper tool set for the task at hand. The same strategy is employed in reusable sterilized surgical trays. In orthopedic surgery, colorants are utilized to indicate sizes in implant devices before permanent installation.
4. Upon admittance to a health care facility, a patient may even be color-coded with bracelets indicating communicable disease risk factors.
5. Colorants are often used in healthcare food service to designate dietary considerations. The list of usages is so varied that an entire industry segment has grown around them.

Select commercial colorants for various medical applications available in our database: