When we were little, disposable diapers already existed, but many of our parents did not use them because the price was high. Me and my brothers, in fact, used a kind of absorbent pad with a plastic that knotted at the sides.
Gradually the disposable diapers were decreasing in price and its use was extended and massive, while its technology was improving. The curiosity of the matter, and what we are going to comment today is: Did you know that this improvement, that the components of today's diapers, come from NASA?
It all started in the 80s
In the 1980s, NASA began to investigate how to control the logical needs of astronauts at those times when they could not make use of the systems intended for it, that is, at take-off, landing and at times when that go out into space. The solution they found was a pair of rider pants that included a material called Sodium polyacrylate.
This material is a white powder that has the ability to absorb some 300 times its weight in water. When it comes into contact with water, or in the case of diapers, with urine, it absorbs it, generating a kind of jelly. As the layer containing the powder is in the middle of other layers, the jelly is isolated from the baby's skin and the humidity is now much less than years ago, when the diapers were combinations of cellulose and cotton.
If you want to see the operation of this polymer live, I recommend this YouTube video (or others, since there are many examples, just do a search with the words sodium polyacrylate):
But NASA did not think about pollution
Diapers are superabsorbent. The asses of our children are drier than ever, but everything that glitters is not gold. The current diapers, with the components that are used now, take centuries to degrade. This is a problem for our future generations, who will have to deal with tons of material in landfills (they say that 4% of what arrives there are diapers).
Possible solutions have been heard for years, since there are companies that are seeing in such quantity of diapers a possibility of future. I talk about the possibility of break down diapers in all its parts and make use of them for different purposes.
While that time comes, as alternatives, we have cloth diapers or biodegradable disposable diapers, which take 100 times less to degrade than the others, that is, about 4 or 5 years.
What secret will NASA have for us?
We do not know if NASA will be investigating to further improve its technology, but surely if it does baby diapers will improve as well.
In recent years we have begun to see baby diapers with much thinner and less annoying superabsorbent components for babies. Some so thin that they are too "stiff", propitiating leaks of pee. Come on, that in the pursuit of comfort they are losing effectiveness, because it is useless to be comfortable if they then wet their pants.
In any case it is curious, very curious, that our children are using NASA technology, isn't it?
