Vinyl chloride (VC) makes modern life possible. As a building block for hundreds of products, the chemical enables the safe production and use of technologies that can be seen all around us. From life-saving blood bags, sustainable water pipes, car interiors and televisions to durable flooring, furniture, wall coverings and electrical wiring – even the cables that connect us to the internet – are all possible thanks to VC. The list goes on and on and on.

Ignoring these fundamental facts, a handful of agenda-fueled activist groups have sought to exploit the tragic events in East Palestine last February to ban VC. Two groups merit special scrutiny here: Toxic-Free Future (TFF) and the anti-VC website Safe Piping Matters (SPM).

Both outfits have recently amplified outright falsehoods about the safety of using and transporting VC as the first anniversary of the derailment in Ohio approaches.

We’d like to take a closer look at the misinformation promoted by these groups and dispel the unfounded concerns they’ve tried to foist on the public.

Transporting VC: just the facts

In late January, TFF published an error-riddled report attacking the rail transport of vinyl chloride. The authors employed carefully selected statistics and half-truths to build their fallacious case, urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to ban VC. SPM repeated many of the same talking points in a pair of recent blog posts.

The primary flaw in the TFF report was its assumption that large quantities of VC are transported by rail. “We estimate that up to 36 million pounds of vinyl chloride travels … across nearly 2,000 miles of U.S. railways at any given moment,” the authors speculated. Left out of the report was the CDC’s striking observation that “In many cases, vinyl chloride is transported by pipeline directly to the plant producing [other products].

In fact, around 95% of the vinyl chloride consumed in the United States is sent by pipeline to a processing facility on the same property. Put another way, TFF’s estimates represent just five percent of the VC used in the US.

Since so little vinyl chloride is shipped by rail, train accidents involving VC are exceedingly rare. Nevertheless, rail remains a very safe way to ship chemicals. More than two million carloads of plastics, fertilizers and other chemicals were moved by rail in 2022. And while the goal is for 100% safe transportation, more than 99.9 percent reached their destinations without incident.

Indeed, derailments are generally uncommon in the US. According to a 2021 analysis by the Eno Center for Transportation, the “vast majority” of train accidents are derailments that occur in rail yards or elsewhere on rail company property. Most of these accidents are “relatively minor,” the report added. Department of Transportation data also shows that train accidents have steadily and significantly declined since 2000.

VC safety

Transportation aside, Toxic-Free Future’s allegations about VC are equally misleading. The simple fact is that six decades of research and real-world use prove VC is safe.

Exposure to VC is nearly non-existent today. TFF omitted that the industry has completely changed the way VC is processed to protect workers during manufacturing. And the industry conforms with very strict manufacturing and safety regulations by the US government.

This is supported by the fact that the last case of a very rare form of liver cancer attributed to VC exposure during production in the 1970s was diagnosed in 1974 — that is, 50 years ago. But groups like TFF want the public to falsely equate the modern vinyl industry with its predecessor from the 1970s. And in doing so, they ignore major technological developments that have dramatically improved worker safety since.

We prefer the way the Biden Administration put it in 2022: “... [T]he vinyl industry takes safety and health seriously.”

Implying that the public is at risk from vinyl chloride exposure is even more disingenuous. Ironically, we can illustrate this point using the source TFF cited to bolster its safety claim, the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), which stated:

“Vinyl chloride is not normally found in urban, suburban, or rural air in amounts that are detectable…”

ATSDR noted this in the very document TFF referenced. A separate agency FAQ also cited by TFF reported that the general public is unlikely to be exposed to VC through food or water, while other studies have found that finished products contain miniscule amounts of vinyl chloride that cannot cause harm.

Facts must prevail

The TFF report concluded with a call that the EPA “expeditiously” ban VC, owing to the “serious danger” it holds for public health. Though as we’ve seen in just this brief analysis, neither the transportation nor the production of vinyl chloride poses a threat to Americans.

The unfortunate truth is that Toxic-Free Future and sympathetic outfits like Safe Piping Matters are willing to mislead the public and disrupt their lives–that’s what a VC ban would do–if it gives them an opportunity to advance their anti-plastic agenda. Americans deserve much better than that.