The United States is about to embark on a massive infrastructure project courtesy of the Biden Administration: replacing millions of lead water lines to protect the public from the known risks of exposure to the toxic metal. Facilitated by the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, the effort to eliminate lead pipes was boosted by research showing that lead can seep into drinking water and “cause irreversible developmental delays, difficulty learning and behavioral problems among children,” as the Washington Post reported recently. 

The project will likely cost several billion dollars and take a decade or more to complete, but before it can even begin, we have to ask an important question: what material should replace the lead pipes? We’ve argued, at length, that PVC is the optimal choice. 

With a lower price tag, smaller carbon footprint and longer service life than any other piping material, PVC is a perfect solution for municipalities looking to replace aging lead lines—which is why so many US towns and cities have turned to the material to supply their residents with clean drinking water.

But not everyone will acknowledge these facts.  Some environmental activists and their allies in the press have used the Biden Administration’s plan as an opportunity to rehash misleading claims about PVC pipe. To make sure the public has the best information at their disposal, we’d like to once again correct a handful of recent stories wrongly maligning PVC piping. 

Truthout buries the truth about drinking water

Written by a self-described “fact-checker,” Truthout’s coverage of the pipe-replacement project was mostly free of facts, alleging that “as many as 50 different chemicals [are] released into drinking water by PVC pipes, including hormone-disrupting organotin compounds and, potentially, phthalates.”

This is highly misleading. Contaminants in drinking water, regardless of the pipe material that transport the water, are tightly regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The agency’s drinking water regulations, authorized by Congress in 1974, are “legally enforceable primary standards” that “protect public health by limiting the levels of contaminants in drinking water.” [our emphasis].  

Phthalates, as we have explained previously, are additive plasticizers, chemicals used to manufacture flexible PVC products. Water pipes by contrast are rigid and engineered to withstand harsh environmental conditions for more than a century. Phthalates are not utilized in the production of plastic water pipe.

Truthout did correctly report two facts: PVC pipe is widely used in the US, and its popularity is only set to increase:

“Bluefield Research, a market research company focused on water, predicts that 80 percent of domestic water pipes will be made of plastic by 2030. Westlake Corporation, an international petrochemical manufacturer, plans to begin building a $134 million expansion to its PVC pipe plant in Wichita Falls, Texas, by the end of this year.”

Not-so-volatile PVC

Colorado Politics published an equally flawed op-ed on October 8 declaring that the city of Denver relies on water pipes “made from volatile chemicals.” This is factual but not truthful information. PVC pipes are made from vinyl chloride, a chemical that readily vaporizes (the definition of “volatility”). However, finished PVC products contain essentially no vinyl chloride, and PVC itself is inert, meaning it doesn’t react chemically with other substances. 

The public is simply not exposed to harmful levels of vinyl chloride or any other chemical through PVC water pipe. This includes benzene, a compound emitted by burning trees during wildfires that can enter damaged water lines. Colorado Politics insisted that benzene results from melted PVC pipe, but as experts have known for years, it “cannot be produced from PVC combustion in an open-air fire.”

Conclusion

PVC pipes deliver safe, clean drinking water to millions of Americans every single day. Why anyone would want to disparage a material that fulfills such an important public health function is beyond us. But spreading misinformation about PVC is unacceptable, and as long as misleading stories keep hitting the headlines, we’ll keep calling them out.