A team of researchers from York university has said that waste products from old LCD TVs may be recycled for use in medical procedures. The team has reportedly come up with means to gather a chemical compound called polyvinyl-alcohol from old LCD screens. This compound is widely used in LCD technology and the researchers have determined a way to recycle and use it in tissue scaffolds and also in dressings and pills.
The panels of old LCD televisions are usually dumped in landfill sites or incinerated. Polyvinyl-alcohol is an adhesive, non-toxic substance which the UK researchers claim can be extracted from the old LCD panels. According to Professor James Clark, polyvinyl-alcohol is well suited for biomedicine due to its property of not provoking a response from the immune system of man. Prof Clark is the director of York Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence. He also feels that it is essential to find ways to recycle as many elements of LCDs as possible so that the need to incinerate and bury them is eliminated.
