The recent wildfires in Hawaii claimed the lives of more than 100 people, displaced thousands more and destroyed millions of dollars worth of property. Instead of using their abundant resources and influence to promote practical solutions that could prevent the next fire, some environmental activists and researchers are using the crisis to bolster their political agendas.

Longtime PVC opponent and engineer Andrew Whelton typified this unhelpful response in a recent article for The Conversation titled: “After Maui fires, human health risks linger in the air, water and even surviving buildings.” As he has done many times before, Whelton tried to pass off a demonstrable falsehood as uncontroversial fact:

“When plastic pipes heat up, they can also decompose and then directly leach chemicals into water … My colleagues and I have documented benzene levels that exceeded hazardous limits for drinking water after several previous fires. ” 

This claim runs headfirst into several key objections. First, “Our nation’s drinking water infrastructure system is made up of 2.2 million miles of underground pipes that deliver safe, reliable water to millions of people,” the American Society of Civil Engineers notes. These pipelines are unlikely to be directly damaged during a wildfire—which occurs above ground, of course. 

This helps explain a second fact The Conversation article overlooked: PVC pipe does not leach benzene during open-air combustion. Whelton’s research, as we have noted before, involves experiments in which samples of PVC pipe are heated to extreme temperatures under artificial conditions. These studies do not approximate the conditions in Hawaii, California, Colorado or any other region affected by wildfire. As a trained scientist, Whelton has an obligation to make this crucial detail clear to the public, and he failed to do so.

Next, wildfires produce benzene regardless of whatever infrastructure they may damage. According to the EPA, benzene is one of the combustion products released “when wood or other organic matter burns.” That includes the invasive grass species that fueled the blaze in Hawaii. Pollutants emitted during wildfires are well-known sources of water contamination.

As Whelton correctly observed, water supplies are often contaminated during wildfires because “Loss of water pressure can allow pollutants to enter pipes.” Water officials in Maui identified this very phenomenon as the cause of water contamination during the disaster. Nowhere did the city mention melted, decomposed or otherwise damaged water pipes.  

If Whelton really wanted to safeguard water supplies during wildfires, he would support code change proposals that require the use of Back Flow Preventer (BFP) devices, which can stop the pressure loss that allows contaminants into water pipes. 

Instead of reporting all the facts to his audience, Whelton wrote a carefully framed advocacy piece that left readers with a distorted understanding of an important public health issue. That’s always unhelpful. But in the wake of the tragedy in Hawaii, misinforming the public may divert attention from solutions that could help mitigate the next wildfire. And that’s simply unacceptable.