Excerpted from "The History and Influence of PEX Pipe on Indoor Environmental Quality" by Robert Bean ©2007
The "Big Bang" of PEX goes back to 1933 after a potentially fatal explosion at the Imperial Chemical Industries laboratory in England.
According to ProfessorThomas Engel, after the high-pressure
experiment with ethylene gas went awry, little else was left behind except a
white, wax-like precipitate in the remains of an autoclave. "It was the heat,
pressure and the oxygen acting as a catalyst on the gas that left behind a
material, which had properties that would soon change the world of
plastics."
