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Silicone products have become popular over the past couple of years.
The vibrant colors, unique designs, and feasibility have made the silicones products the go-to products for many people who are trying to reduce their family exposure to plastic products.
The plastic products contain endocrine-disrupting and other cancer-causing chemicals.
There are many alternatives to plastic products like glass, wood, rubber, and stainless steel, and these have been used for quite some time.
If you want to live a zero-waste lifestyle, then silicone products are the best.
They are the ideal solution that offers all the benefits like lightweight, flexible, reusable, durable, and temperature resistant.
Silicone is a natural product as it is derived from sand.
What is silicone?
The plastic industry considers silicone a plastic no matter how much green marketing it is claiming. Technically, silicone is a part of the rubber family.
Still, if we define plastics in a wide range, silicone is a hybrid between synthetic rubber and a synthetic plastic polymer.
Silicone has been used to make soft rubber-like items, spreadable fluids, and hard resins. However, the plastic industry considers it as an advanced form of plastic.
It has many plastic-like properties: flexibility, pliable, temperature resistance, waterproof, and transparency.
The silicone can be shaped or formed and softened or hardened like plastic into anything, but it is unique as compared to plastic.
It is much more temperature resistant, sturdy, and has low levels of reactivity with chemicals.
Moreover, it is highly absorptive, making it beneficial for medical and industrial applications.
It has a non-stick and non-staining surface that is easy to clean, making the silicone products accessible for cookware and kitchen gears.
Why are silicone products safe to use?
● Temperature resistance
The FDA approved silicone products as food grade and will not react or release any hazardous compounds when heated.
Several studies prove silicone products as stable when exposed to extreme heat.
Still, they do release a negligible level of certain compounds called siloxanes when it is exposed to temperature over 300F.
The level of siloxanes released is minimal, and these compounds are associated with reproductive impairment, liver changes, and some may be endocrine-disrupting.
The good news is that no trace of released siloxanes has been found from silicone products that are not exposed to temperature over 300F.
So, silicone products are safe if not exposed to extreme temperatures.
● Healthiness
It is tested that not all silicone products are made equal. There are plenty of silicone products that are cheap and contain fillers.
It is visible that affordable products are less safe.
You should make sure that while buying a silicone product, you choose 100% food-grade silicone. It is pure and safe to use.
● Tested
The best part of these silicone products is that they are tested and approved.
The vibrant colored silicone products are confirmed to undergo a lead-free test since the colorants could be a source of lead.
The silicone products are mostly used for newborns and children, so they must be safe for them. These products are mostly BPA and lead-free.
● High-end Composing Material
The silicone products are recognized for their exceptional thermal stability, as it can withstand extreme temperatures.
At low temperatures, the silicone maintains its flexibility, making it the most exceptional material for the consumers, even in an extreme environment.
Moreover, silicone has other resistant properties in addition to temperature resistance. It resists many different materials, including pungent chemicals, and water oils.
The silicone having these resistant properties is high-quality and non-toxic, making it trusted composing content for consumers that is safe to use.
● Sterilization Abilities
The silicone rubber with FDA security guidelines and can experience numerous sanitization techniques.
The distinctive disinfection practices incorporate dry heat, steam autoclaving, gamma radiation, electron beams, and ethylene oxide.
These silicone disinfection strategies have made silicone items safe for the clinical business and appraised a clinical evaluation material.
The Apple rubber uses silicone items as a top fixing material for various purposes.
These purposes include the clinical business, designing parts, IV segments, clinical siphons, feeding gadgets, and embedded material.
The Apple rubber uses a clean ISO ordered space for assembling and testing silicone seals.
● Flexible
The silicone is smooth to form and customize; you can make exceptional custom shape molds for specific applications and necessities.
The seal can acquire opposition properties by ambiguously changing the compound formula.
It tends to be made with more water and temperature opposition.
The silicone can be fabricated to be progressively translucent or any lively shading, even sparkle in the dark.
Silicone is often picked due to its adaptability for advanced and imaginative models and testing for configuration engineers.
The complex formed shapes are accomplished by utilizing Liquid Silicone Rubber.
The two-section platinum restored elastomer is infused into the mold and the produced.
Diverse LSR mixes offer distinctive advantages, including self-greasing, misty, conductive, clinical evaluation, food-grade, making it safe to utilize.
● Efficient
The silicone is well known for its withholding property of adaptability and low pressure in outrageous hot or cold.
The silicone elastic is genuinely sturdy and has great mechanical properties.
The silicone items are exceptionally tough and dependable, making it usable for years.
This property makes it a zero-waste item, as you can utilize it for a considerable length of time without getting harmed.
Also, it offers electrical protection, fire repellent, and low concoction reactivity.
Every one of these properties makes it an item protected to use for a broad scope of businesses.
● Recyclability
The silicone does not decompose for a very long period. It has excellent preserving properties for our environment.
The silicone products are recyclable, but not through the local recycling means.
You have to take them to a specialized private recycling facility that is made for silicone products.
These industries will down-cycle the silicone products in oils and lubricants for types of machinery, producing no waste and harmful compounds that make it safe to use.
Safety Information
The silicone industry and many experts have been doing extensive studies on the impacts of silicone products on human health and the environment.
The following reviews and assessments support the fact that silicone products are safe to use for a wide range of applications.
- Regulatory agencies in Canada have reviewed a remarkable amount of scientific data. They have reached the result that silicone products meet satisfactory safety regulations for human health and the environment.
- Moreover, the Federal Government Agency Canada evaluates that silicone products are commonly used consumer products and concluded that they are not introducing any kind of danger to the human health and environment under any concentrations.
- All of the scientific information available another report reviewed that Siloxane D5 does not cause any danger to the environment because there is no evidence is available to prove it.
- The board of safety also states that Siloxane D5 does not accumulate to significant concentrations and cause damage to air, water, soils, or sediments.
- The EU’s Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety (SCCS) is of the sentiment that silicones do not represent a hazard for human wellbeing when utilized in cosmetic items.
- A specialist logical board – Cosmetic Ingredient Review (CIR) – has presumed that silicones do not represent a hazard to human health from their utilization in beautifying agents.
A Green Product
The silicone is termed as a green product to use as there is nothing chemically harmful that prevents the usage of silicone products.
They can be recycled, but it is challenging and expensive to find a silicone recycler that accepts the post-consumer products.
As we know that silicone products have become popular, there is one way to recycle them through a specialized service.
This service is costly to afford for an individual but considered reasonable for an organization.
The silicone comes under the eco-friendly product category, as it is obtained from natural resources.
Moreover, the hydrocarbons used to make silicone is usually derived from petroleum or natural gas; these methods are safe for human wellbeing and the environment.
Silicone products are potentially more environmentally safe as compared to plastic.
The plastic is not as sturdy, durable, and hard as silicone. The silicone is static than plastic, which means there are fewer chances of leaching any chemicals into the food when used for food storage purposes.
Conclusion
Sadly, not a great deal of logical investigations has been done to answer that question that is silicone safe or toxic.
There is additionally no noticeable proof that recommends silicone rubber is awful for human wellbeing and the earth.
That is the reason the more significant part of the silicone items is named as GRAS means, “Generally Regarded as Safe.”
Also, the FDA checks the silicone items during assembling and even after production to ensure that the organizations are manufacturing, preparing, assembling, and packing safe items.
There is an investigation in 2016 that centers around the human response to clinical evaluation silicone.
It was found that clinical evaluation silicone is exceptionally non-harmful, has no impact on the human resistant framework, and does not cause any skin disturbances.
Make sure to purchase a silicone item that is, in any event, appraised food-reviewed and have high caliber.