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Plasticizer migration

The tacky film on an old remote, torch or camera grip is not dirt. It is the plastic's own additive arriving at the surface, which is why cleaning it off works briefly.

In detail

Plasticizers are low-melting solids or high-boiling organic liquids added to hard plastics to impart flexibility, and the federal conservation guidance describes what happens to them next: they migrate to the surface over time, leaving the material tacky and, as they leave, brittle. Migration also causes warping and distortion. That single mechanism explains a household problem nobody names — the sticky remote control, the gummy torch grip, the soft-touch coating on a camera or a kitchen appliance that has become unpleasant to hold. It is not soil, it is not mould, and it is not a cleaning failure. It follows that wiping removes what has arrived at the surface and not what is still to come, which is why the tackiness returns. Two further findings travel with it. Degradation announces itself by smell before sight: acidic odours such as vinegar, or an odour of camphor, indicate early-stage degradation, and the first visible signs — weeping, tackiness, discolouration, distortion, crazing, embrittlement — mean deterioration is already rapid and irreversible. And cleaning is itself listed among the causes: poor handling and improper cleaning techniques accelerate deterioration.

Why

Sources for this page

Sources

  1. Conserve O Gram 8/4: Care and Identification of Objects Made from Plastic

    National Park Service, US Department of the Interior · Government or regulator

    Relied on for: That plasticizers migrate to the surface over time leaving the material tacky and brittle and causing warping, that acidic or camphor odours indicate early degradation, that the first visible signs mean deterioration is rapid and irreversible, and that improper cleaning accelerates deterioration. (states this directly)

    Verification: a person has read the passage relied on.

    Read on — The sections headed Plastics Identification, Causes of Deterioration and Signs of Deterioration, plus the ventilation guidance. Supports the claim as stated. Gives the household-plastics record a deterioration mechanism and explains the sticky-remote-control problem, which the catalogue previously had no account of at all. Also establishes that improper cleaning is itself a named cause.

Last reviewed by a person on .

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