PVC is a vitally important material. This versatile plastic expands access to life-saving medical care, delivers clean drinking water to millions of Americans and helps keep our food safe from harmful contamination. 

Unfortunately, a cohort of rabble-rousing activists is more interested in eliminating plastic than promoting public health. They’re utilizing science-free scare tactics to try and pressure the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) into banning vinyl chloride (VCM), a chemical with a proven safety record that’s used to make polyvinyl chloride (PVC). 

For example, Liz Hitchcock, director of the federal policy program at Toxic-Free Future, declared:“If EPA follows the science and the law … they will be led to the conclusion that vinyl chloride is far too dangerous… and should be banned.” Echoing the same sentiment, Judith Enck, president of the billionaire-backed activist group Beyond Plastics, alleged “There is solid scientific evidence that vinyl chloride is a dangerous chemical.” Not to be outdone, The Union of Concerned Scientists claimed:

“…[T]he scientific evidence is overwhelming—vinyl chloride causes unacceptable levels of harm to human health and the environment, with impacts from its production to disposal.”

The evidence surrounding vinyl chloride is certainly overwhelming, but it’s no help to anti-PVC activists. Let’s take a closer look at what the science really says about this vitally important chemical.  

The facts about VCM

The first and most important question is this: how much vinyl chloride is the public exposed to? The reassuring answer is, “very little.” As we reported recently, removing VCM is part of the PVC manufacturing process. The residual quantities are so negligible that scientists often can’t detect vinyl chloride in finished PVC products consumers use every day. That’s just one of the reasons the National Cancer Institute says that “PVC is not a known or suspected carcinogen.”

The same can be said of environmental VCM exposure. According to the EPA, “outdoor air concentrations of vinyl chloride are generally quite low.”VCM can sometimes be detected in water, but at “very low levels,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) adds. Crucially, the EPA concluded in 2014 that vinyl chloride has “low bioaccumulation potential,” meaning it is unlikely to build up in the human body and cause harm. 

Putting all this data together, the public’s exposure to vinyl chloride is so low as to pose no known risk to human health. 

Cancer risk “virtually eliminated”

Enck and other activists enjoy inciting hysteria by claiming vinyl chloride increases cancer risk. That’s highly misleading. The CDC has maintained for decades that a rare liver cancer once linked to industrial VCM exposure among workers during the manufacturing process has been “virtually eliminated.” 

This important public health achievement was driven by major improvements in the vinyl chloride manufacturing process in the 1970s “that greatly reduced atmospheric releases of VCM and almost completely eliminated worker exposures,” the CDC explains.  

Put another way, even workers who manufacture vinyl chloride aren’t in harm’s way. That’s a striking observation, and it prompts an obvious question: if the people who make VCM don’t face a meaningful risk, how can Enck and her allies insist that the public be scared of the chemical? 

The bottom line

Anti-PVC activists profess a commitment to science. But when faced with the option to follow the evidence wherever it leads, the groups attacking vinyl chloride quickly veer off course to preserve their ideological assault on plastics. Such people don’t deserve to be taken seriously.