I just ran into this in a relatively new game - level 6, haven't met Gianna yet. I saw the silicone I got from the New Texan fields had a "use" button, and even though I knew what you actually do with it is give it to Gianna, I was curious why the use button was clickable, and what it would do. So I tried it, it soft-locked my game, and I had to load a saved game:
Opening your inventory and attempting to "use" a bag of android-grade silicone shows a screen which says "You have no use for this item at present." Hitting back (the only option) on this screen takes you back to the inventory. So far, this is all fine. But then when you hit back on the inventory screen, instead of taking you back to the world, it takes you back to the "You have no use for this item at present" screen instead. From there you can only get back to the inventory screen, which continues to send you to that message screen every time you try to leave the inventory. It's impossible to get back to the world without loading a saved game (or at least, I couldn't find any way to do it).
Opening your inventory and attempting to "use" a bag of android-grade silicone shows a screen which says "You have no use for this item at present." Hitting back (the only option) on this screen takes you back to the inventory. So far, this is all fine. But then when you hit back on the inventory screen, instead of taking you back to the world, it takes you back to the "You have no use for this item at present" screen instead. From there you can only get back to the inventory screen, which continues to send you to that message screen every time you try to leave the inventory. It's impossible to get back to the world without loading a saved game (or at least, I couldn't find any way to do it).