Is Timeplast toxic?
One of the most frequently asked questions we get is; If Timeplast dissolves in water, it obviously hasn’t disappeared given that matter never disappears. So are you now creating liquid plastics or leaving behind toxic byproducts?
If you have the same doubt, please allow us to elaborate.
You are correct when assuming that just because something dissolved does not mean that it is gone or that it doesn’t change the chemical composition of the remaining water that dissolved it. Sometimes you may have a toxic chemical in solid form, and after it dissolves, it will remain in invisible form, yet its toxicity will linger. Examples of this would be radioactive materials, which could dissolve in water and then appearing inexistent while they continue to pollute.
Having said that, Timeplast behaves like sugar alcohol after dissolution. Unlike fossil-based plastics, safety was the number one characteristic in the design of our materials. To that point, our raw materials have been independently approved for human consumption, and we have certified through an independent laboratory in an ASTM test, that Timeplast fully dissolves. Complete dissolution usually takes it down to a 80gr/mol molecular weight (sugar is around 400gr/mol). This doesn’t mean that it disappears but that it breaks down into natural occurring very low molecular weight molecules. In other words, it leaves behind no microplastics at all given the fact that after a full dissolution what is left is Ethanol and Hydroxyl groups, which are compounds made of carbon and an OH radical (as in oxygen and hydrogen). These groups are ever present in biochemistry, they’re constantly present in oceanic water, in alcohols, fats and fatty acids, sugars, amino acids, peptides, proteins and throughout the entire biochemical cycle, our tech doesn’t stimulate the creation of new elements that may be problematic or toxically-diverse. There are some groups with anhydrous radicals which is why we talk about groups (in plural) yet all of them are safe. Honestly speaking in large quantities dissolved in small water volumes they could change water’s pH but only if the water is contained, however the planet has 321 million cubic miles of water, so altering water’s planetary pH is impossible even if we dumped the Timeplast’s equivalent of 1000 times the amount of plastic our society is producing each year at once in the oceans. We actually made a field test and video on this https://youtu.be/HM9ID3wrLpk
Since our technology allows the molecular programming in any type of plastic, we do have other cheaper alternatives that can come from petroleum if the customer needs it, yet even in these cases, we’re addressing the main problem with conventional plastics; which is the fact that they never dissolve, not even when they have been eroded down to a nanometric particle, they continue to have an ultra high molecular weight, forever polluting the food chain. A fossil-based alcohol is chemically very similar to a bio-based one, and byproducts after dissolution won’t have the toxic biomagnification, meaning they won’t leave behind microplastics forever lingering in our environment, actually the other way around, they’ll perform properly for the intended pre-programmed time (ergo our company’s name), not any longer, and right afterwards the entire molecular structure will safely dissolve to naturally occurring molecular weight levels, which is the only path to have a clean environment at the macro, micro and nanometric level.
In contrast, our world is already filled with petroleum based micro plastics and pH isn’t being changed however we are now consuming plastic in nearly every drink we have or food we eat from a container, which is why we all are ingesting roughly the weight of a credit card every week according to studies https://www.eenews.net/articles/microplastics-have-been-found-in-human-blood-now-what/
What is concerning to us is the fact that we're still using conventional fossil-based plastics as if they were safe, because they are in fact seemingly safe or non-toxic from today's safety standards perspective, however the most recent science explains irrefutably that conventional plastics are in fact very toxic and we’re ingesting them at a rate of one credit card (weight equivalent) per week. The question would be, what would you rather have in your lungs and bloodstream; microplastics or sugar alcohol? We’re not solving 100% of the issues related to a material as massively used as conventional plastics, but we’re definitely a move in the right direction.
