If you are talking about urethane finishes or varnishes, all finishes are food-safe once they have cured.  This is a well-known fact of Urethane parts safety amongst manufacturers of the food processing industry.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has established the urethane parts safety requirements to ensure no case of poisoning from urethane parts is present. Therefore, urethane or polyurethane is a chemical compound, and like all the other chemicals, we must be careful when handling them.

Urethane Parts: Safety Instructions

Urethane is used to make several household and commercial items that we use in our everyday lives, such as:

  • Car padding
  • Furniture upholstery
  • Tires
  • Racquet grips
  • And more.

If it wasn’t a safe material, it would have been banned a long time ago considering it was created in the 1930s. However, when urethane is in the original liquid form, it is like any other chemical. And, you should handle it with the same care you use when handling, say, cleaning products.

Liquid urethane is safe to use – if you read and followed the directions carefully. Its usage shouldn’t occur in proximity to children or animals. Workers who handle liquid urethane wear personal protective equipment (PPE) like safety goggles, disposable gloves, and masks to minimize skin contact. If liquid urethane comes in direct contact with eyes or skin, the individual must seek medical attention immediately.

You must also avoid breathing in the urethane fumes. For the process of mold making and casting, it is critical to use “room-sized” ventilators (founnd in all our facilities at Uniflex Inc.) All of our workers don NIOSH-approved respirators to minimize the risk of inhalation during the custom molding process.

Liquid Urethane or Aliphatic Isocyanates

There are several different groups of urethanes; one class is known as “aliphatic diisocyanates” requires additional urethane parts safety precautions. These are specifically for industrial use and hobbyists or students should not use them.

If you are using urethanes or polyurethanes and are experiencing an allergic reaction, stop using them and go to the ER right away. The ingestion, skin absorption, or inhalation of polyurethane or its fumes is toxic. But once it is cured or turned into an end-user product, it is 100% safe.

If this seems confusing, consider this: do you think apples are poisonous? Of course not, you probably eat them every day. But did you know that the seeds inside an apple contain trace amounts of cyanide? If ingested in a large amount, apple seeds can be fatal. But the odds of you ingesting spoons-full of apple seeds is unlikely.

Similarly, if you are using products or parts made from urethane, your risk of getting sick from exposure to urethane is low. In fact, urethane is naturally found in fermented foods like yogurt, soy sauce, bread, beer, and wine!

Contact Uniflex Inc. to Know More about Urethane Parts Safety

If you still have questions or concerns about using urethane parts, Uniflex Inc. experts will be happy to talk to you. Just give us a call at 248-486-6000 or write to us online and our representatives will get back to you shortly.