Beyond Belief: Activist ‘Documentary’ Spreads Myths About PVC, East Palestine

The train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, last February was a terrible tragedy. While cleanup efforts advance and independent experts closely monitor the health of local residents, fully assessing the situation on the ground takes time. Ideological activists have capitalized on that fact to bolster their decades-long campaign against vinyl chloride (VCM) and PVC. 

Led by the billionaire-backed group Beyond Plastics, a coalition of political agitators quickly descended on the town and launched a media blitz that continues to this day—the goal being to sow doubt about the safety of plastic products Americans use every day without incident. 

The latest salvo in this campaign is a deeply dishonest documentary called “What Really Happened in East Palestine?” With significant input coming from Beyond Plastics, almost every claim the film makes is patently false or highly misleading.

Abusing a tragedy
As a precursor to PVC, vinyl chloride is an essential chemical; it’s used to engineer life-saving medical devices, sustainable water infrastructure and even plastic wraps that prevent food waste. If Beyond Plastics can create enough concern about vinyl chloride, it can lobby for the elimination of all these products. Helping the residents of East Palestine is clearly not the goal, as the press release for the documentary illustrates.

A rare occurrence 

The problems with the documentary begin immediately. Just a few seconds into the film, the narrator claims that the accident in Ohio “can happen anywhere.” But this assessment is completely backwards: the events in East Palestine stand out precisely because they are incredibly rare. There are three primary reasons we know this is the case.

First, vinyl chloride is rarely moved by rail. “In many cases, vinyl chloride is transported by pipeline directly to the plant producing [PVC],” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explains. Beyond Plastics kept this critical detail out of the documentary.

Second, when VCM and other chemicals are transported by rail, accidents almost never occur. More than two million carloads of plastics, fertilizers and other chemicals were shipped by rail in 2022. The vast majority—more than 99.9 percent of them—reached their destinations without incident. 

What explains this reassuring safety record? Railroads have very strict safety protocols for transporting vinyl chloride and other chemicals, because they are regulated by the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) and Federal Railroad Administration (FRA).

This is a trend we see more generally with rail transportation. Data released in 2022 by the Department of Transportation shows that all rail accidents have declined markedly over the last two decades. 

Facts about vinyl chloride

The Beyond Plastics documentary spends most of its runtime on vinyl chloride. We hear from a pair of activist-experts, Andrew Whelton and Judith Enck, both of whom wrongly assert that East Palestine residents have been exposed to harmful levels of VCM and other substances. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), they claim, allowed the public to return home without conducting adequate safety testing. 

But that, too, is false. In July, an independent air sampling study conducted by Carnegie Mellon and Texas A&M found that vinyl chloride measurements in East Palestine “over time from both stationary and mobile monitoring indicated levels below long-term health thresholds.” 

Data collected by the EPA in June led federal regulators to the same conclusion. “EPA continues to review preliminary and final air sampling data, which supports air monitoring trends

that air quality has remained below screening levels,” the agency reported. When local news outlets requested an update in August, EPA added that:

“The air and soil in and around the community has been monitored and sampled, and results confirm our confidence that the air and soil in East Palestine and surrounding communities, including inside homes, is not a concern for incident-specific chemicals.” 

All EPA air, soil and water data from East Palestine is freely available online. As of October 2023, the regulator says its ongoing soil testing indicates that “residents can continue to use their properties for normal use, including recreation and gardening.” 

Conclusion

The residents of East Palestine have endured some very trying circumstances over the last eight months. They deserve our sympathy and whatever material resources are necessary to restore their community. As that rebuilding effort continues, Beyond Plastics and its allies should quit trafficking in fear to bolster their anti-plastic political agenda. 

MIT Technology Review Misleads About PVC Recycling

Two things are certaIn about the sustainability of PVC. First, the material is routinely recycled. Second, many PVC products last for decades, significantly reducing their environmental footprint. Nevertheless, we routinely spot news coverage that overlooks these facts. MIT Technology Review’s October 12 story “Think that your plastic is being recycled? Think again” is a textbook example.

Here are several important points we asked the publication to share with its readers: 

While some researchers claim that PVC can’t be recycled,  the reality is that more than 1 billion pounds of the material are recycled annually in North America at more than 100  vinyl recyclers. Since 2014, post-consumer PVC recycling has increased by more than 40 percent.

Moreover, the unmatched durability of vinyl products dramatically reduces the amount of plastic in circulation. PVC water pipes, for example, have a service life in excess of a century, according to research conducted by Utah State University’s Buried Structures Laboratory. 

Utilizing sustainable plastics is an important step toward a circular economy, and that’s precisely why eliminating PVC would be a mistake. 

Builder Magazine Botches The Facts On Vinyl Construction Materials

Builder Magazine recently ran a deeply misleading story titled “Not Every Builder Will Have a Degree In Toxicology,” which claimed that vinyl construction materials need to be “replaced.” Decades of real-world experience show that these products help protect public health and the environment. Unfortunately, Builder ignored this abundant evidence and opted to spread falsehoods about PVC and vinyl. Here’s the correction we sent them. 

“PVC building materials carry significant health and environmental benefits. For example, vinyl flooring is widely used in health care facilities because it helps mitigate the spread of infectious disease—an invaluable quality in our post-COVID world. 

And since vinyl flooring can last up to three decades, it prevents the release of pollutants generated by manufacturing, maintaining and transporting alternative materials. Developing net-zero supply chains is a noble goal, and the facts show that PVC can help builders reach it.”

Buffalo News Editorial Board Denies Readers Important Facts About PVC

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.

Andrew Whelton Resurrects Debunked Claims About Benzene

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.

Toxic-Free Future Spreads Misinfo About East Palestine Derailment

Ever since the tragic train derailment in East Palestine this winter, Americans have been asking reasonable questions about chemical transportation and regulation. They want to know what caused the train accident and how to prevent it from happening again. Most of all, though, they want to know that their families are safe. 

In hopes of alleviating some of the concerns surrounding the events in Ohio, we want to address a few of the most-common misconceptions about vinyl chloride, a chemical used to make PVC that has been the subject of much news coverage and commentary from environmental groups, such as this blog post from Toxic-Free Future (TFF). 

While the post rightly focused on the concerns of East Palestine residents, it incorrectly summarized the science surrounding vinyl chloride and downplayed the chemical’s important role as a building block for so many of the PVC products society depends on.

Vinyl chloride exposure

Let’s begin with the most pressing question: does vinyl chloride exposure pose a risk to the public today? TFF told its readers that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has labeled the chemical a carcinogen, but this is only part of the story. 

In the early 1970s, before the implementation of important safety protocols, some employees at PVC production facilities developed a rare kind of liver cancer after repeated exposure over many years to very high levels of vinyl chloride. Today, however, technological innovations and regulations ensure that the production process is safe for workers and the residents who live around these facilities. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) clearly states that these liver cancer cases have been “virtually eliminated.”

According to the EPA, outdoor air concentrations of vinyl chloride “are generally quite low,” in part because emissions of the chemical have plummeted in recent decades. For every ton of PVC produced in the US, emissions of vinyl chloride have been cut by more than 86 percent since 1987. For this reason, the general public doesn’t face a cancer risk from vinyl chloride exposure. 

What about East Palestine, though? An independent study conducted by Carnegie Mellon and Texas A&M sought to answer that question. The researchers found that vinyl chloride measurements in East Palestine “over time from both stationary and mobile monitoring indicated levels below long-term health thresholds.” 

What about dioxins?

TFF and other organizations sent a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claiming dioxins emitted from the derailment are “the most toxic chemicals known to humankind,” but this again was an incomplete summary. 

Dioxin relates to a group of combustion-produced chemical compounds emitted by a wide variety of sources, such as wood burning, forest fires, backyard trash burning, and industrial activities. The EPA estimates that the vast majority of human exposure – 90 percent of it – comes from the intake of animal fats, mainly meat, dairy products, fish, and shellfish. 

With respect to dioxin emissions from the controlled vent and burn safety procedure during the derailment in East Palestine, the EPA explained that:

“Through sampling of on-site waste and off-site soils, EPA’s assessment of the impacts of the vent and burn operation has shown that the impacts of dioxin contamination to be minimal … “

The EPA further noted: 

“The air and soil in and around the community has been monitored and sampled, and results confirm our confidence that the air and soil in East Palestine and surrounding communities, including inside homes, is not a concern for incident-specific chemicals.”

Environmental levels of dioxins have been declining for 30 years “due to reductions in manmade sources,” according to the EPA. Indeed the vinyl industry is responsible for less than five percent of all regulated sources of dioxin and less than 0.6 percent of all total sources in the US. 

The EPA’s soil tests also reportedly found “no unusual amounts” of dioxins in East Palestine. “The chemical constituents in soil don't look to be changed from [the] typical background condition,” the EPA’s response coordinator added.The federal agency has helpfully made all of its testing methods and data from East Palestine available online, and is releasing bi-monthly summaries of its ongoing clean-up efforts in and around the area.  

PVC’s overlooked benefits

TFF was clear that its ultimate goal is to eliminate the use of PVC in the name of environmental protection. “We don’t have to live with PVC plastics,” the group’s blog post declared. This statement dismisses the essential role PVC plays in making our lives better.The versatile plastic is used to produce life-saving medical supplies, durable pipes that supply clean drinking water, protection for electrical cables, and containers and wraps that prevent food-borne illness and food waste. These are invaluable products that make modern life possible. 

Like all Americans, we want to preserve our natural resources for future generations and protect our families from harm. But achieving those goals is possible, in part, because we utilize adaptable materials like PVC to improve our living standards while reducing our environmental footprint. Eliminating it would be a costly mistake. 

CNN, New York Times Ignore FDA’s Phthalate safety determination

In May 2022, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) summarily denied a petition filed back in 2016 urging the agency to ban the use of phthalates in food-contact materials. These plasticizers have been safely utilized for five decades to make hundreds of plastic products, including some food packaging, more flexible and durable. But the petitioners insisted that phthalate exposure is harmful. The FDA’s response was unequivocal:

“…[W]e do not have a basis to conclude that dietary exposure levels from approved ortho -phthalates exceed a safe level. 

Led by the litigious activist group EarthJustice, the petitioners almost immediately requested the FDA to reconsider its determination. The agency refused their request in July 2023, again explaining that the best available evidence did not support the petition:

“In sum, we concluded that the … information contained in and relied upon by your Original Petition …did not set forth a sufficient showing that the scientific evidence supports amending our regulations to prohibit the use of these substances…”

If this is the first you’re hearing of the FDA’s back-to-back determinations that phthalates in food packaging don’t threaten public health, it’s because the legacy media all but ignored the agency’s conclusions.

The obvious follow-up question is, why? 

Phthalates are certainly newsworthy. In just the last year, more than 1,600 stories about these chemicals—roughly 10 pages of Google search results—have been published. Indeed, The New York Times and CNN wrote detailed articles in 2020 about phthalate plasticizers; both stories gave phthalate opponents free reign to mislead the public with unsupported claims and accuse the FDA of refusing to protect children from supposedly dangerous substances. 

Three years later, after the FDA twice scrutinized the petitioners’ claims and found them wanting, the press suddenly has nothing to say on the topic. This isn’t a simple oversight, it’s a gross breach of journalistic ethics. “The purpose of journalism,” the American Press Institute declares, “is … to provide citizens with the information they need to make the best possible decisions about their lives, their communities, their societies, and their governments.” 

The media’s failure to meet the basic expectations of their profession in this case prompts a troubling hypothetical question: had the FDA agreed with the petitioners, do you think those same news outlets would have stayed silent? We think not.   

By writing alarmist stories based on cherry-picked studies, and dismissing the FDA’s final determination, these publications withheld vital food-safety information from the public—leaving them to fear a risk that doesn’t actually exist. Americans deserve much better.  

Anti-PVC ideologues can’t accept the facts: benzene isn’t produced from PVC in open-air fires

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.