"Polyisoprene condoms": Is Lifestyles deceiving its customers?

[elfs]

The other day, I went shopping for condoms. The store where I usually buy my Avantis was sold out, but the woman behind the counter pointed me to Lifestyles Skyn, which claimed to be made of "polyisoprene," approved by the FDA, and "superior to polypropelyne".

I don't know about the superior argument; I've never had a problem with polypropelyne condoms; I rather like them more than latex. But I decided to give them a try. And my first reaction when using one was that it felt a lot like latex.

That's because latex is polyisoprene. As the Department of Polymer Science at the University of Southern Mississipi puts it, "One of the most well known natural polymers is polyisoprene, or natural rubber."

Several companies have developed purely synthetic forms of polyisoprene, which means that the material made from it lacks many of the allergenic proteins found in latex made from natural rubber sources. It's also possible to make polyisoprene without some of the curatives used in processing natural rubber, so materials made with polyisoprene may be free of other non-latex allergens usually only encountered when using latex products. Some of these companies tout their products as "synthetic latex polyisoprene", whereas others claim it is "non-latex polyisoprene."

None of this is clear on the Lifestyles packaging and branding. Until Lifestyles clarifies what it means by "non-latex polyisoprene," I consider the packaging deceptive, defective by design, and will not be buying any more. This is no different than juice companies removing "sugar" from the list of ingredients and replacing it with "cane juice concentrate."

Comments

Same Name Different Game

[(Anonymous)]

The major problem here is a misunderstanding of a few organic chemistry concepts. Natural rubber latex is just that, a polymer that is found in nature. A polymer is made up of many small sub-units (monomers) linked together to create a long chain. By studying the monomers found within the polymer structure of natural rubber (and other elastomers), we have developed methods of 'copying nature', if you will. It starts with chemical synthesis of the monomers, and is followed by polymerization (in which bonds are created in a chain-like fashion, one-by-one linking together the monomers). BANG! Now you have a compound that looks just like natural rubber latex... but IS it? No. The semantics issue comes up because we name compounds according to their chemical structures. Synthetic polyisoprene rubber, indeed, mimics the structure of natural rubber latex which is also comprised of isoprene chains (a.k.a.- polyisoprene). However, it is not the same. I know, it sounds quite dichotomous even as I type it. Perhaps taking a few organic chemistry courses would help your understanding (unless of course this post just bored you half to death).