ABSTRACT
Synthetic polymers, natural polymers, and modified natural polymers are widely used throughout most of the world today and contribute enormously to the quality of life in the industrial world and are helping to raise living standards in the Third World. Because polymer properties are readily controlled by their chemical composition and manufacturing process, they are used as commodity plastics in such diverse applications as packaging, personal hygiene products, construction of automobiles, computers, houses, clothing, etc.; they are also used as specialty addi tives in many applications such as water-soluble polymers in detergents, paints, adhesives, concrete, etc., and in medical applications for drug delivery and as tem porary and permanent prostheses such as sutures and bone replacements, respec tively. Yet, in spite of all these enormous benefits, synthetic specialty polymers and plastics have, in the minds of many people in the general public, legislative bodies, and environmental groups, an overriding connotation of being harmful to the envi ronment, regardless of all their other attributes. The word “environment” is used loosely here to include the human body and the natural environment, since many of the issues encountered by degradable polymers are common to both; this paper, however, is only concerned with the natural environment.
