Wednesday, November 03, 2010

A Wee Oversight

I made a wee oversight in my post the other week on the domestic uses of urine. Plastic manufacture! Mixing urea and formaldehyde creates urea-formaldehyde (sometimes know as urea-methanal) which is a non-transparent thermosetting plastic resin.  It was commonly used from the 1950s to the 1980s to make plastic casing of electrical equipment.  Heaps and heaps of things in your grandparents house was made from urine, desk lamps, light fittings, radios it was everywhere.  Urea-formaldehyde is still sometimes used as a bonding agent in marine plywood.

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