Is Platinum Silicone the Safest Choice for Baby?

Material safety is the first priority when it comes to baby feeding. The material used in traditional feeding supplies is plastic. Baby products made from thermoplastic polymers are less heat-resistant, unhygienic, difficult to sterilize, cannot be recycled, and have even been found to contain harmful additives such as bisphenol A (BPA). This has raised concerns about baby health around the world, as the effects of exposure on children's health can be lifelong. Compared with plastic, silicone is a more reliable and safe alternative, and its many excellent properties make it the first choice in the field of baby and child products.

It should be pointed out that the "silicone" commonly referred to in the industry should be called "silicone rubber" from a rigorous scientific perspective, and is one of the important members of silicone. You may often see different labels marked: standard silicone rubber, medical grade, and food grade silicone. Like other elastomers, silicone comes in grades, which represent different qualities and uses. In this article, we mainly introduce platinum silicone, which represents the highest quality grade and is a type of silicone. This type is the safest choice for food service, baby care, cookware, medical, and other industries with skin contact.

Below we provide you with valuable information from the definition of platinum silicone, manufacturing process, curing system, advantages, and comparison of this material with food-grade silicone and plastic materials so that you can make the safest choice.

What is Platinum Silicone?

Platinum silicone is a two-component system and only uses metallic platinum (active component) as a catalyst. Compared with other grades of silicone, the difference lies in the addition of different excipients and more stringent processing. Therefore, compared with ordinary silicone, it has better purity, flexibility, durability, and hypoallergenicity. It should be pointed out that it is named after the use of platinum (pt) catalyst in the synthesis process, not that silicone rubber has platinum.

How is Platinum Silicone made?

First of all, silicon is a chemical element. Metal silicon is extracted from rocks or sand containing silicates, and then chemically reacts with methyl chloride to convert into siloxane monomers, and finally synthesizes the basic raw material of silicone. Silicone rubbers with specific properties are obtained by modifying silicone polymers. Finally, these silicones are vulcanized using a platinum curing system. We know from its manufacturing process that this type of silicone is very pure and clean. On the contrary, most plastics are made from petroleum and contain environmental hormones of concern.

Curing system

Silicone rubber only using platinum curing agents is cross-linked in polyaddition systems. This chemical reaction does not have any by-products. This means greater purity and safety.

Advantages of platinum silicone

Platinum silicone is an extraordinary material that contains no dangerous chemicals and meets all the needs of contact with babies. Its excellent inherent properties make it very suitable for the manufacture of baby and childcare products, providing manufacturers with perfect solutions.

Excellent Durability and Flexibility: Depending on the variant, silicone rubber can be expertly designed and manufactured to provide precise specifications such as heat resistance, flexibility, tear, and tensile strength. This means it can withstand long-term violent falls, pulls, microwave and refrigeration temperatures, and provide safer and more comfortable skin contact.

Chemically inert and harmless: With the exception of certain polar solvents (strong bases, acetone), platinum silicone has excellent resistance to cleaning agents and other corrosive chemicals. This means it won’t migrate or leach any chemicals from inside that could be harmful to your baby. Compared to other materials, it is odorless, ensuring a neutral impact on food. Platinum-cured silicone has no residual reactive groups, allowing it to be in contact with food for a long time. Even if it is used multiple times, it will not leave any taste in the baby's mouth. It is more suitable for applications in baby pacifiers, bottles, bibs, tableware, and breast pumps.

Bioinert: Platinum silicone is highly biocompatible, has almost no reaction to children's skin or tissues, and does not contain allergy-causing BPA or its substitutes (BPS). These fully comply with the stringent requirements of infant products.

Easy to Clean and Sterilize: Low surface tension platinum silicone makes it easy to clean and keep clean. You can hand wash baby products or put them in the dishwasher. The stable silicon-oxygen bond structure can easily resist strict sterilization processes (gamma rays, steam, and ethylene oxide).

Platinum silicone or plastic, which one is better?

All elastomers have advantages and limitations. Although the production cost of platinum silicone is high, it is strongly recommended that you use this nearly perfect polymer if your project application field is baby products with high safety requirements. Its advantages over plastic are:

High breathability
Excellent resistance to yellowing
Maintains original softness up to -100 °C
It performs better than plastic in terms of odor, fading, and mechanical properties
Excellent heat and cold resistance over a wider temperature range (-150 to 550 degrees Fahrenheit)

Platinum silicone or food-grade silicone, which one is more suitable for use in highly sensitive baby products?

Their main difference lies in the use of different curing systems. Platinum silicone is cured using only a platinum catalyst curing system, and food-grade silicone can be cured by a peroxide or platinum curing agent. This means that platinum silicone has lower VOC (cyclic siloxane) content and can meet regulatory requirements for sensitive applications, thereby eliminating maternal and infant silicone product manufacturers' concerns about the safety of volatile substances. Although using a more expensive platinum catalyst to produce silicone will increase the overall cost, manufacturers do not need to perform a secondary vulcanization process, simplifying the production process, improving efficiency and safety, and providing a comparable price point to the market. It should be noted that silicone products that undergo peroxide curing systems can also be approved by the FDA. Products cured using platinum additives not only inherit the safety, environmental protection, and direct contact with the human body characteristics of general food-grade silicone but can also obtain the approval of the world's most stringent LFGB (German Food Regulatory Agency).

Can baby products using platinum silicone be chewed?

Platinum-based silicone has excellent tear strength, giving silicone products bite resistance. Since the maximum tear strength of silicone rubber products is 50N/mm, it effectively reduces the risk of suffocation caused by entering the baby's mouth after being pulled off. The most common teething toys are silicone teethers. Babies can also obtain many beneficial benefits by biting and sucking teethers, such as relieving tooth itch, enhancing chewing ability, psychological satisfaction, and security.

Conclusion

Platinum silicone's high purity, excellent mechanical properties, and hypoallergenic properties make it the safest choice for infant products. Yuanyi has served the maternal and infant products processing industry for 13 years, provides different molding solutions, selects high-quality platinum silicone, and strictly controls quality during the production process to ensure that your products are of high quality, purity, and safety. All of our products have withstood rigorous testing by third-party agencies and comply with the safety standards of the US FDA and CPSIA or the German LFGB. Our high-quality silicone products do not contain worrisome fillers (low-quality silicone or allergy-risk BPA, latex, lead). Taken together, maybe you are making the right choice.

Is Platinum Silicone the Safest Choice for Baby?

What is Platinum Silicone?

How is Platinum Silicone made?

Platinum silicone or plastic, which one is better?

Platinum silicone or food-grade silicone, which one is more suitable for use in highly sensitive baby products?

Can baby products using platinum silicone be chewed?

QUICK LINKS

PRODUCT CATEGORY

ABOUT

CONTACT