The editorial board of the Buffalo News published a one-sided essay on July 23, 2023, that contained a litany of misleading and inaccurate statements about PVC. Shortly after, the Vinyl Institute’s President and CEO, Ned Monroe, submitted a letter to the editor in an attempt to provide the public with the facts. The Buffalo News declined to publish Mr. Monroe’s piece.

We believe news outlets have an obligation to present both sides of an issue. We’re publishing Mr. Monroe’s response in full so that readers may have an informed view of PVC based on additional information the Buffalo News chose to withhold from its readers:

Your editorial board had only one item correct in its July 23 article: “PVC use is growing worldwide.” Nearly everything else in your commentary is wrong. PVC isn’t one of the “biggest polluters in the world.” In fact, our carbon emissions are much less than emissions from cement. And more than 1.1 billion pounds of PVC are recycled annually in the US and Canada.

You are wrong to write that “PVC is difficult, if not impossible, to recycle,…” The common method to recycle PVC is to mechanically regrind it and blend it with other PVC to make new products. This mechanical recycling is safe, widely used, and a valuable part of circularity.

PVC is a safe, versatile plastic used to manufacture everything from life-saving medical devices like blood bags to durable pipes that have delivered clean drinking water for more than 100 years.

Your editorial amplifies incorrect concerns about vinyl chloride (VC), a chemical used to manufacture PVC, with strict federal regulations and industry safety innovations that help protect the health of all Americans.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, outdoor air concentrations of vinyl chloride “generally quite low,” because VC emissions have plummeted more than 86 percent since 1987. The Centers for Disease Control adds that cases of a rare liver cancer found in PVC industry workers in the 1970s have been “virtually eliminated.”

If anyone is taking a step backward, it’s the opponents of PVC, and your editorial board.