PLEXIGLAS IS IN TUNE WITH THE TIMES
Common use of poly(methyl methacrylate) to curb virus’s spread taps musical memory
“Don’t sit on the Plexiglas toilet said the momma to her son.”
That’s the intriguing beginning to the lyrics of a song hidden in The Serpent Is Rising album by American rock band Styx in 1973.
“Hidden” means that the song is not listed on the label and is heard only after playing As Bad as This, the fourth song on Side 1 of the album. The message of the song is very confusing when you consider Verse 2, which goes as follows:
A boy of five stands close to the toilet; Holds the lid up with one hand; Won’t let go the lid for fear that; On his banana it will land.
Don’t sit down on the Plexiglas toilet, yeah.
One would think that if one fears injury to that particular part of the anatomy from an attack by a toilet lid, one would be motivated to sit down in order to avoid such a catastrophe.
The scenario may sound odd, but in 2013 the British Journal of Urology published a paper titled “No small slam: increasing incidents of genitourinary injury from toilets and toilet seats.”
The researchers described 9,000 cases of penile crush injury reported by U.S. emergency room physicians between 2002 and 2010 with most occurring in boys ages two to three years who were undergoing toilet training. Risk could be reduced, the authors concluded, by exchanging heavy toilet seats with slow-close toilet seat technology.
What has prompted this discussion of toilet seats and the rekindling of memories of the Styx album? The reference to “Plexiglas.” It is hard to think of anything good about COVID-19, but it sure has spurred a booming market for Plexiglas. Just about every store features Plexiglas panels in some way to separate salespeople from customers. Given that we know how this virus is most likely to spread, basically by droplets expelled from the mouth when sneezing, coughing or just talking, see-through barriers make a lot of sense. Especially when you don’t have to worry about them breaking like glass. So, thank chemistry for poly(methyl methacrylate), the plastic commonly known as Plexiglas.
As the name suggests, poly(methyl methacrylate) is made of repeating units of methyl methacrylate. German chemist Rudolph Fittig demonstrated the polymerization of methyl methacrylate in 1877, but it wasn’t until the 1930s that the reaction was put to practical use simultaneously in England by Rowland Hill and John Crawford at Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) and Otto Rohm in Germany. They were greatly helped by Mcgill University chemist William Chalmers’ finding that methyl methacrylate could be readily produced from acetone and hydrogen cyanide, both of which were readily available.
ICI trademarked the product as Perspex and Rohm named it Plexiglas, which remains a trade name. Plexiglass, with the double “s” ending, is a common name used for all acrylic plastics.
Plexiglas and Perspex played important roles in the Second World War with both the Allies and the Germans finding multiple uses for the novel plastic. Submarine periscopes, aircraft windshields and gun turrets all benefitted from the clear plastic that could be moulded into desired shapes and was much tougher than glass, although it was not indestructible. Direct hits would shatter it and send tiny slivers flying everywhere.
Some of these slivers, on occasion, lodged in the pilots’ eyes. Usually any foreign substance in the eye causes terrible irritation, but a British eye surgeon, Harold Ridley, noted that Spitfire pilots did not suffer the expected consequences. Somehow, their eyes tolerated this particular foreign material.
Ridley now had a vision. Maybe here was a way to solve the problem of cataracts, those opaque deposits that form in the lens of the eye as we age.
The only method to treat cataracts at the time involved surgically removing the lens and fitting the patient with “Coke bottle” glasses, which would do the job that the natural lens had done. The widespread belief was that any kind of implanted lens was doomed to fail because the eye would reject it.
But maybe it wouldn’t reject poly(methyl methacrylate), Ridley thought.
In 1949 Ridley carried out his first successful Perspex implant. The plastic performed well, but the surgical techniques were not refined enough; the lens would often slip out of place and the trauma of the surgery led to all kinds of complications. Most of these problems were eventually solved by the Dutch ophthalmologist Cornelius Binkhorst, making the implantation of acrylic lenses after cataract surgery routine.
Polyacrylics have since found their way into our lives in numerous other ways. Artificial teeth, eyeglasses, the “glass” around hockey rinks and aquariums are just a few examples. One of the most popular tourist attractions in Japan is the Hipopo Papa Café where you can sit on a toilet surrounded on three sides by a giant Plexiglas aquarium. While answering nature’s call, customers can enjoy the tropical fish swimming all around them.
I don’t know if the seat itself is made of Plexiglas, but it certainly could be.
There are many commercially available Plexiglas toilet seats, with some even featuring designs that give the appearance of an aquarium. More fun to use than ordinary white seats — and they can come equipped with slowclose lids so that little boys don’t have to sit on the Plexiglas toilet to avoid injury.