Worms, Beware

"Stronger than steel, withstood shell fragments as successfully as armor plate ..." Thus a laminated plastic cloth was excitedly described at last week's meeting of the American Chemical Society in Washington (see SCIENCE). This week a small sailboat made of the same plastic took honors in the first postwar plastics competition sponsored by the magazine Modern Plastics; the boat is impervious to marine worms, needs no paint and can withstand bullets fired at close range.

All told, the booming plastics industry served up some 7,000 items for the contest, from 1,300 manufacturers. This was impressive evidence of how the industry has grown. In the first competition in 1936, there were only a few hundred entries made of four different plastics; this year there were 13 plastics, many of them developed since the war began.

The new plastics products which also won prizes in the competition, ranged from hardware (garden hose) and building materials (wall tiles, translucent plastic-block walls, vinyl floors, fluorescent light fixtures) to gadgets (harmonicas, toy blocks, perfume atomizers) and artificial hands, complete with hair.

Despite the industry's fast growth during the war--when plastics took the place of scarce strategic materials--most plastics makers still have not caught up with demand. Though many a Gloomy Gus predicted that plastics would glut the market when scarce materials became more plentiful, they are now displacing metals in some lines (e.g., toys, 40% of which are now made of plastics). They have become standard materials for flash light cases, radio cabinets, toilet seats, shower curtains, raincoats, furniture coverings, electrical appliances. They have even been tried as eye-catching bathing suits (see cut), but wearers complain that they are clammy and uncomfortable.

The industry is still expanding. Union Carbide & Carbon Corp. (which owns Bakelite, the biggest plastics maker) is stepping up production 50%. Dow Chemical Co. is spending $17 million on new plants. Du Pont has completed a new multimillion-dollar ultramodern plastics factory near Parkersburg, W. Va. Production, which was only 150 million pounds in 1936, this year will hit an estimated 1.6 billion pounds.

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