True Left

Continuing from:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/ancient-world/new-world-raft-design-and-colonialist-response/msg26166/#msg26166

After Westerners encountered non-Western lacquering, they immediately developed Western versions made of (you guessed it) plastics. First there were:

Solvent-based dipping lacquers that contain nitrocellulose, a resin obtained from the nitration of cotton and other cellulosic materials, debuted in the 19th century along with nitrocellulose's other commercial applications.

John Wesley Hyatt created the winning replacement, which he created with a new material he invented, called camphored nitrocellulose—the first thermoplastic, better known as celluloid. The invention enjoyed a brief popularity, but the Hyatt balls were extremely flammable, and sometimes portions of the outer shell would explode upon impact.
...
An overheated container of dry nitrocellulose is believed to be the initial cause of the 2015 Tianjin explosions.[59]

Then there were:

Lacquers using acrylic resin, a synthetic polymer, were developed in the 1950s. Acrylic resin is colourless, transparent thermoplastic, obtained by the polymerization of derivatives of acrylic acid.

Acrylic acid is severely irritating and corrosive to the skin and the respiratory tract. Eye contact can result in severe and irreversible injury. Low exposure will cause minimal or no health effects, while high exposure could result in pulmonary edema. The LD50 is 340 mg/kg (rat, oral) with the lowest recorded LD50 being 293 mg/kg (oral, rat) comparable to ethylene glycol which is indicative of being a potent poison.[12] Ethyl acrylate was once used as synthetic food flavoring and was withdrawn by FDA possibly due to cancerogenic effects observed in lab animals.[13]