Plastic

A few years later, people told pollsters they considered cellophane the third most beautiful word in the English language, right behind mother and memory.

Sizewise, medicine is a small end market, consuming less than 10 percent of all polymers produced in the United States—peanuts compared to packaging (33 percent), consumer products (20 percent), and building and construction (17 percent).

Neonatology is a relatively new medical specialty. The first NICU was set up in 1965. That the field has blossomed in the age of polymers is probably not a coincidence, given the challenges of treating babies with hair-thin veins and tissue-paper skin. Still, until the 1980s, most of the intravenous fluids used in NICUs came in glass bottles. Short remembers the worry and inconvenience of those bottles falling and breaking. At first, said Short, the move to plastic seemed a tremendous advance. “We all thought plastics were inert, safe. We didn’t have to worry about it. Then as the research came out, it became more and more evident we needed to pay attention.”

And here, Short hit on the central paradox of plastic in medicine: in the act of healing, it may also do harm.

With plastics, hospitals could shift from equipment that had to be laboriously sterilized to blister-packed disposables, which improved in-house safety, significantly lowered costs, and made it possible for more patients to be cared for at home.

Polymers made possible most of today’s medical marvels. Dutch physician Willem Kolff, driven by a conviction that “what God can grow, Man can make,” scrounged sheets of cellophane and other materials in Nazi-occupied Holland to perfect his kidney-dialysis machine. Today, plastic pacemakers keep faulty hearts pumping, and synthetic veins and arteries keep blood flowing. We replace our worn-out hips and knees with plastic ones. Plastic scaffolding is used to grow new skin and tissues; plastic implants change our shapes; and plastic surgery is no longer just a metaphor.

Cheap toys have their price: “In order to maintain even modest profits, many of these factories have no choice but to accept toy companies’ low prices,” the group noted. “Sadly, workers’ salaries and general treatment are the only flexible factor of production . . .”

At that time, the average worker at Mattel’s plant in Guanyao (also in Guangdong Province) made $175 a month for a sixty-hour workweek. She had to pay for her dormitory housing and meals out of those wages.

Recent labor-law reforms may improve migrant workers’ lots somewhat. But they will have a long way to go. The watchdog group China Labor Watch reported in 2007 that conditions in many toy factories are “devastatingly brutal,” marked by “long hours, unsafe workplaces and restricted freedom of association.” In some factories during peak season, workers are forced to put in ten- to fourteen-hour days for weeks, without a single day off.

This may not be rocket science, but it’s more complicated than it looks. It’s taken the company much trial and error to ensure the discs contain just the right blend of materials, that they come out at the proper weight, and that they don’t deform while cooling, said Ada. Indeed, the company spent a considerable amount of money upgrading its machines, buying new equipment, and machining new molds in order to make Frisbees. What has made it worthwhile? I asked. “Quantity,” Ada answered, without hesitation. The company was producing over one million discs a year.

Thirty years ago, Shenzhen was a sleepy fishing town of about seventy thousand people. Now it has a population of about eight million. “It changes every day,” my translator Matthew Wang later told me. He spent a few years working in factories there. For him, it was a lonely time. “In this city, you need to keep moving, moving. Nothing is stable. Accommodations, jobs, friends, everything. That’s why economically it’s good, but it’s not a good place to live. My wife says I would have gone crazy if I’d stayed here.”