Safety Considerations for Polymers

Safety considerations for products containing polymers are often related to the components of the products rather than the polymers, which are usually relatively safe ingredients. Protein polymers should be tested for sensitization however, such problems are not frequent for the types of protein hydrolysates used in hair care. Pure synthetic polymers (with no monomer contaminant) are generally mild ingredients of relatively low toxicity, one example being polyvinyl pyrrolidone originally used as a blood plasma extender in medicine. 

Safety concerns for synthetic polymers are sometimes due to contamination with monomeric impurity. Monomers are sometimes highly toxic (e.g., acrylamide [94]) or even carcinogenic (e.g., ethyleneimine [95] or vinyl chloride [96]) or highly irritating to skin (e.g., acrylamide [94] or acrylic acid [97]).Therefore, control of unreacted monomer level can sometimes be critical to the safety performance of synthetic polymers. 

Fawkes, F.M. In Chemistry and Physics of Interfaces, Ross, S., ed., pp. 1-12. American Chemical Society, Washington, DC (1965). 

Pauling, L. The Nature of the Chemical Bond, p. 3. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY (1948). 

Prutton, C.F. Principles of Physical Chemistry, p. 742. Macmillan, New York (1958). 

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