Styrofoam is generally white in color, looks clean, simple shape, not easy to leak, able to maintai

Global life is a life filled with challenges and competition in every field, both in the field of Science and Technology (Science and Technology), and other industries (Ginter, 2005). Competition in the field of industrial demands and technological advances in the field of human resources of high quality. In addition, competition in the industry can be found in the presence packing peanuts of competition in making products fast, easy to carry anywhere, and can be used in a long period of time.
To make such products a lot of factories that use chemicals to make food storage packaging. The packaging is made to be able to store food in a long enough period of time, the food was kept fresh, simple, and easy to carry. Food packaging most popular and widely used these days is styrofoam. This they are due because of the use of styrofoam as packaging food prices provide a relatively inexpensive, simple, and easy to carry anywhere (Widyaningsih, 2010).
However, on the other hand it turns out the use of styrofoam as food packaging provide a variety of negative health effects. Styrofoam is used for packaging foods and beverages that contain fat easily react with fat molecules. In addition the use of styrofoam food packaging seagai packing peanuts instant noodles can cause styrofoam to decompose into monomers styrene and mixed with noodles that we eat. So that takes us directly and styrene packing peanuts monomer into the body. Though these materials can be harmful to human health because it is carcinogenic (cause cancer) and can cause endocrine disruption (endrokrinologi disease and disorder in reproductive system in humans (Hidayat, 2011). Accordingly, in this article will be assessed on: (1) Styrofoam packing peanuts understanding and (2) the impact of the use of styrofoam.
The benefits to be gained from writing packing peanuts this paper is to add information and improve the reader's understanding packing peanuts of the styrofoam, as well as the negative impact of the use of styrofoam packaging.
Styrofoam is the name used when the substances are traded polystyrene (Tyas, 2011). Polystyrene is a thermoplastic polymer that is formed packing peanuts from styrene pelomerisasi. Styrene is an organic compound having the chemical formula C 8 H 8, which is a liquid, colorless, and mirib like oil. Styrene monomers combine into polystyrene through rekais addition polymerization. The equation is presented as follows.
Styrofoam is generally white in color, looks clean, simple shape, not easy to leak, able to maintain its shape, and light. The color is white and looks clean cause frequent dugunakan styrofoam container for food. The form is simple, not easy to leak, able to maintain its shape and light causes a lot of people use it as a forum for electronic equipment and other equipment that is easy to carry anywhere. In addition styrofoam also able to maintain hot and cold so that objects inside still feels warm or cold (Surami and Marzuki. 2011).
Food was stored there also remain fresh and intact. Not only that, reasons for choosing styrofoam as food packaging materials especially because packing peanuts the cost of packaging is cheap. With all the advantages that styrofoam is always an option for traders to wrap food. Practical, comfortable, lightweight and economical is the reason why people are interested in using styrofoam. In the market price of styrofoam only Rp 400 per piece. Much cheaper than a banana leaf, which is commonly used by traditional traders. No wonder that the products ranging from soups to soft drinks at fast food restaurants use this container.
Styrofoam packing peanuts is made from a mixture of 90-95% polystyrene and 5-10% as n-butane gas or n-pentane. In the past, blowing agent used is CFC (Freon), because this class of compounds packing peanuts can damage the ozone layer is currently not in use anymore, now used blowing agent which is more environmentally friendly. Polystyrene is made from the monomer styrene through the polymerization process. Polystyrene foam is made from styrene monomer through suspension polymerization at a certain pressure and temperature, further heating to soften the resin and evaporating the residual blowing agent.
Styrofoam is a plastic material that has special properties with structure composed of grains with low density, has a light weight, and there is a space between the grains that contain air that can not deliver the heat so this makes it an excellent thermal insulator. In general, the lower the density the foam, the higher insulation capacity.
Developments in research and studies that have been conducted packing peanuts by bebe