Jeff Kaufman's Writing

Here's to the Polypropylene Makers

2026-02-27 · 13:00 UTC ·2 min read

Brief

Braskem America's Marcus Hook (PA) and Neal (WV) plants solved pandemic staffing risk by having ≈80 volunteers live onsite for 28 days (12-hour shifts), producing ~40M lb of meltblown polypropylene—enough for ~500M N95s. Workers received full pay (including sleep time) and a paid week off, illustrating how targeted compensation and local creativity can preserve critical supply chains in emergencies.

Why it matters

In early COVID (~2020), ~80 workers at Braskem America's Marcus Hook, PA and Neal, WV polypropylene plants volunteered to live onsite for four weeks, working 12-hour shifts and sleeping on air mattresses to avoid infection and keep production running.

Key details

  • Over those 28 days they produced ~40 million pounds of meltblown polypropylene—enough for roughly 500 million N95 masks—and were paid full wages for the period plus a paid week off; the company had more volunteers than available space.
  • The arrangement appears unique among factories (though some utilities did similar measures); the author argues that above-market compensation enabled this critical, creative staffing solution and that such incentives matter for emergency supply-chain resilience.
Source evidence

title: Here's to the Polypropylene Makers
contenttype: article
publication: Jeff Kaufman's Writing
published: 2026-02-27T13:00:00+00:00
sourceurl: https://www.jefftk.com/p/heres-to-the-polypropylene-makers

word_count: 534

Six years ago, as covid-19 was rapidly spreading through the US, my
sister was working as a medical resident. One day she was handed an
N95 and told to "guard it with her life", because there weren't
any more coming. N95s are made from meltblown polypropylene, produced from plastic
pellets manufactured in a small number of chemical plants. Two of
these plants were operated by Braskem America in Marcus Hook PA and
Neal WV. If there were infections on site, the whole operation would
need to shut down, and the factories that turned their pellets into
mask fabric would stall. Companies everywhere were figuring out how to deal with this risk.
The standard approach was staggering shifts, social distancing,
temperature checks, and lots of handwashing. This reduced risk, but
each shift change was an opportunity for someone to bring in an
infection from the community. Someone had the idea: what if we
never left? About eighty people, across both plants, volunteered
to move in . The plan was four weeks, twelve-hour shifts with air
mattresses on the floor each night and seeing their families only
through screens. With full isolation no one would be exposed, and
they could keep the polypropylene flowing. The company would compensate them well: full wages for the whole time,
even when sleeping, and a paid week off after. They had more
volunteers than they had space for. I've looked pretty hard, and as far as I can tell no other factories [1]
did this. Companies retooled to make PPE. Ford and GM converted auto plants to make ventilators
and masks . Distilleries made hand
sanitizer . No one else volunteered to move into their
factory. And it wasn't emergency planners who came up with the idea, either.
It was ordinary
people , looking at their situation, and thinking creatively about
how to do their part. In those 28 days they produced 40M pounds of polypropylene, enough for
maybe 500M N95s. These workers were doing something critical that almost no one else
could do. When people argue about higher pricing during emergencies ,
this is what the economics can look like: the work was needed, the
plants could not run without them, and they were paid accordingly. Notice, however, that Braskem made it possible for people to be
heroes. If the workers had been expected to do this for normal wages,
this wouldn't have happened. The number of volunteers is not
independent of the offer. When someone figures out a creative way to
fill a vital gap in an emergency, the people doing the filling should
get paid like it matters, because that's how you get more gaps filled. Their short-term impact was producing the materials for 500M
masks, but I hope their long-term impact is larger: showing how
in an emergency ordinary people thinking creatively about their
specific situation can find solutions no one else would come up with
for them. [1] This does stretch it a little: while this is the only case I could
find for a factory , there were several utilities that did things along
these lines. Ex: 1 , 2 . Comment via: facebook , lesswrong , the EA Forum , mastodon , bluesky