Plastics Used In Pharmaceutical Packaging

Medicine is a special kind of commodity. As a packaging material (or container) that directly contacts the medicine, it must be able to ensure the safety and efficacy of the medicine, ensure the stability of the quality of the medicine, and at the same time meet the convenience needs of patients for medication.


At present, plastics are one of the main packaging materials in various industries. Although the history of plastics used in pharmaceutical packaging is not too long, it has already occupied a large market. Plastics have many advantages, including light weight, not easy to break, easy to use, gas barrier effect, different plastics and easy combination of plastics and other materials, mature molding process, etc., which determines that plastics have and will be used in medicine. Packaging plays an important role. The adaptability between the drug plastic bottle and the packaged drugs is a problem that the drug manufacturer must solve when choosing packaging materials.






Light, heat, humidity, microorganisms, oxygen, and mechanical impact may all have an adverse effect on the quality of medicines. The purpose of packaging is to prevent the above external factors from affecting and damaging the quality of medicines at a certain strength. At present, solid oral preparations are commonly used in packaging forms such as bottles (mostly plastic bottles), blister packaging, and strip packaging.


For plastic bottles, in addition to the selection of materials, it must have a certain thickness and thickness uniformity, and the bottle mouth has excellent sealing properties. For blister packaging, the molded rigid sheet must have a certain thickness. If the PVC hard film fails to meet the temperature resistance requirement, PET hard film or PVC/PVDC composite hard film can be used instead. The other layer of the blister package is aluminum foil for pharmaceutical packaging. The original foil used should be of good quality. It is generally considered that the thickness is above 0.025mm to be pinhole-free.


The various composite films used in strip packaging should be carefully selected according to the characteristics of the medicines in the selection of materials. The packaging of liquid oral liquids is still dominated by glass bottles and plastic bottles. Oral liquid plastic bottles are generally made of PP or PET, which can provide sufficient mechanical strength, avoid mechanical damage, and provide a certain gas barrier and microbial barrier. Among them, the PET bottle is better. The fragrance of the syrup oral liquid packaged in the bottle will not be lost through the wall of the bottle.