Deconstructing Devices: unpacking the hidden material complexity of an IV catheter

Body

How many parts are inside a single IV catheter?

In this case: 17 components, made from more than six different plastics.

As part of After the Single Use, the Deconstructing Devices workshop series examines the material composition of everyday medical technologies through hands-on processes of dismantling, discussion, and analysis. The workshops create space to physically take apart medical devices and consider the infrastructures, materials, and environmental impacts often hidden within objects designed for single use.

In a new video produced for the project, After the Single Use researcher Millie Marriott Webb walks through the disassembly of a single IV catheter, examining each component individually and identifying the different polymers and materials used throughout the device.

What initially appears to be a simple disposable object is revealed to be a highly engineered assembly made from multiple plastics, adhesives, coatings, and specialised components. Many of these materials are difficult to separate, recycle, or safely dispose of, raising wider questions about waste, toxicity, regulation, and the environmental afterlives of medical technologies.

The catheter featured in the workshop was brought by the project’s Senegal-based CRCF research team, connecting the exercise to wider ethnographic and historical research taking place across the project on medical waste, disposability, and healthcare infrastructures.

Deconstructing Devices combines approaches from anthropology, engineering, chemistry, and science and technology studies to explore how medical devices are designed, circulated, used, and discarded. By slowing down and examining devices component by component, the workshops aim to make visible the material complexity and environmental implications embedded within routine healthcare technologies.