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October 27, 2006

Strange But True!

Q. This story begins with a baby's disappearing pee (alarming Mom), wends its way through leak-proof tape and mortar, improved meat packagings and gasoline, extinguished fires, even the construction of the English Chunnel. Can you identify the versatile chemical “star”?

A. It's “super slurper,” technically a “cross-linked polyacrylate polymer,” says Dr. Joe Schwarcz in “The Genie in the Bottle.” That's the stuff in superabsorbent diapers, where the disappearing pee went. In some cases it can retain 5,000 times its weight in water! After diapers came feminine hygiene and adult incontinence products.


 
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