Rubber
Benefits
Natural rubber is an essential raw material used in the creation of more than 40,000 products. It is used in medical devices, surgical gloves, aircraft and car tires, pacifiers, clothes, toys, etc. However, it has been shown that rubber can help plants to heal after they are damaged, by covering wounds and stopping the bleeding. This blocks the entry of harmful bacteria and viruses into the plants.
The properties of rubber include high strength and the capability to be stretched many times without breaking. Natural rubber compounds are exceptionally flexible, good electrical insulators, and are resistant to many corrosive substances.
Negative Impact
Rubber is not the most performance efficient material and its physical properties prevent it from becoming a sturdier substance. Despite its not-so-sturdy properties, it is higher in cost than silicone. Due to being biodegradable, rubber does not have a very long lifespan.
The production of man made rubber also leads to air pollution – when heated for molding, it releases toxins into the air. Water pollution is also associate with synthetic rubber production. It varies from country to country, but SBR and butadiene are common contaminants of water during synthetic rubber production.
Since rubber trees need significant space to grow, vast amounts of land need to be cleared to make way for them. In the Mekong region of Asia is estimated to have cleared three million hectares of forest since 2000 due to the cultivation of natural rubber.
Invention History
As far back as 1600 B.C., Mesoamerican peoples in Mexico and Central America were using liquid rubber for medicines, in rituals, and to paint. . Christopher Columbus was responsible for finding rubber in the early 1490s. Natives from Haiti played football with a ball made of rubber, and later, in 1615, Fray Juan de Torquemada wrote about indigenous and Spanish settlers of South America wearing shoes, clothing and hats made by dipping cloth into latex, making these items stronger and waterproof. One century later, in 1734, Charles Marie de la Condamine went to South America on a trip. There, he found two different trees containing latex: Hevea brasiliensisIt is a tree native to the Amazon. It is economically very important because the latex collected from the tree is the primary source of natural rubber. and Castilla elastic, but only the first became important as a natural rubber source. In 1839, Charles Goodyear invented the vulcanizationProcess of treating rubber with sulfur and heat, to harden it while keeping its elasticity. process, solving many of the problems associated with rubber. Vulcanization is the process of treating rubber with sulfur and heat, to harden it while keeping its elasticity. It prevents rubber from melting in the summer and cracking in the winter. In 1888, Dunlop invented the air-filled rubber tire, making rubber an extremely important raw material worldwide.
References
https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2019.00100
https://thinkofthepandas.com/2022/01/04/is-rubber-bad-for-the-environment-it-depends/#:~:text=The%20production%20of%20manmade%20rubber,water%20during%20synthetic%20rubber%20production.
