Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Furthermore, the method or test to be used depends on what information is
requested.
One should realize that biodegradability is usually not of interest by itself. It is
often just one aspect of health and environmental safety issues or integrated waste
management concepts. It is fairly obvious but often neglected that one should
always consider why a particular polymeric material should be (or not be) biode-
gradable when contemplating how to assess its biodegradability. After all, it is the
intended application of the material that governs the most suitable testing environ-
ment, the parameters to be measured during exposure, and the corresponding
limit values. For example, investigating whether biodegradation of a plastic mate-
rial designed for food packaging could facilitate undesired growth of (pathogenic)
microorganisms requires a completely different approach from investigating
whether its waste can be discarded via composting (i.e., whether it degrades suf-
fi ciently rapid to be compatible with existing biowaste composting facilities).
In most cases, it will not be suffi cient to ascertain macroscopic changes, such
as weight loss and disintegration, or growth of microorganisms, because these
observations may originate from biodegradation of just one of separate compo-
nents. The ultimate fate of all individual components and degradation products
must be included in the investigations. This implies that it is essential that both
the polymeric materials and also intermediate degradation products have to be
well characterized in order to understand the degradation process. For a good
number of biodegradable materials, this means that a lot of work still needs to
be done.
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