Proceedings of the international symposium on radiation vulcanization of natural rubber latex

The First International Symposium on Radiation Vulcanization of Natural Rubber Latex (RVNRL) was held from 26 to 28 July 1989 at Tokyo and Takasaki. In these proceedings, thirty six papers presented at the Symposium are compiled. Main topics are commercial application of RVNRL, characterization of NR latex and vulcanization, properties of radiation vulcanized NR latex, development of sensitizers, mechanism of RVNRL, RVNRL with electron beams, and new Co-60 irradiator for RVNRL. Absence of nitrosamines and low cytotoxicity of radiation vulcanized NR latex are recognized as the remarkable advantages of RVNRL. The radiation vulcanization process for the production of protective rubber gloves for radioactive contamination was presented as the first commercial success in RVNRL. It was reported that various kinds of rubber articles for medical uses have being developed in West Germany. A sensitizer system consisting of n-butyl acrylate and t-butyl hydroperoxide was found to reduce the vulcanization dose to 8 kGy. (author)