The Center for Environmental Health continued its long-running disinformation campaign against PVC, this time with a report containing a mountain of false claims about PVC pipe and benzene from wildfires. We’ve explained the facts on Vinyl Verified before: no credible scientific evidence links the presence of benzene in water supplies to melted PVC pipe from homes destroyed in forest fires.
So we’ll say it again — and cite the experts who understand the material (and know what they’re talking about).
Well start with the PVC Pipe Association (PVCPA), which explicitly states: “Benzene cannot be produced from PVC combustion in an open-air fire.” They add: “[T]he primary source of benzene in forest fires is from the combustion of wood. Burning homes and other structures are secondary sources. … [T]he most likely source of benzene in municipal water systems after a wildfire is not from burning or melting water mains but from outside contaminants entering the system via damaged service lines. . . As water in the system is used to fight the fire, suction draws in contaminants.”
The Vinyl Institute’s Domenic DeCaria reaffirms these same points in an essay he penned for Inside Sources: "Since PVC does not produce benzene in open-air combustion,” he writes, "PVC pipes could not have emitted the benzene found in the [CA] cities’ water. … [S]ome activists often put ideology ahead of science, and it’s no different in the case of PVC."
"Many eco-activists blanketly oppose the manufacture of chemicals and plastics as part of a broader agenda,” DeCaria notes, where “[s]uch misleading tactics threaten to derail the education necessary to understand tragic events like wildfires and the threats they pose to human health and the environment.”
DeCaria continues: "After all, in a wildfire, the greatest threat of harmful air pollutants, including benzene, comes not from manmade materials but from burning wood itself. The most likely source of benzene contamination in municipal water systems after a fire is not from melting pipes or burning pipes, but from outside contaminants entering the system via damaged service lines, which connect buildings to the water main.”
"When a house or business is burned,” DeCaria adds, “the service lines that connect it to the water system will be burned, broken or melted — creating gaps where foreign contaminants can enter. As water in the system is used to fight the fire, suction draws in those foreign contaminants. This problem would persist regardless of the pipe material used — it’s a matter of physics, not chemistry.
Plastics Pipe Institute’s David Fink echoes the same facts: “There is no evidence that the heating or burning of plastic pipe is responsible for the contamination of the water system[s in Northern California].” But rather, “[a]s water is used for firefighting or it runs out, it creates a negative pressure that allows contaminants to be drawn back in. Backflow is the technical term, and it can occur regardless of the piping material.”
Groups like the Center for Environmental Health appear completely at ease with distorting the facts and misleading the public about PVC pipe. When they do, we’ll be here to fact-check them.