Science Vs Hype: Fact-Checking Anti-Plastic Ideologues On PVC

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. 

Safe Piping Matters contradicts 50 years of science on PVC

A one-person “group” with a clear anti-PVC pipe agenda that goes by the contrived name “Safe Piping Matters” (SPM) recently promoted a study by two Poland-based researchers and made some rather odd claims about PVC pipe that have never (to our knowledge) been replicated. 

 Why Paul Hagar, SPM’s executive director, would stake his personal reputation on statements that fail the basic scientific red-face test is beyond us. Truth be told, we would have ignored it altogether, except the scribes at Mechanical Hub decided to lower their journalistic standards by reflexively covering it without doing any homework whatsoever. So yet again, we find ourselves in the familiar place of having to do their job for them. 

 According to SPM, the crux of the study by researchers Joanna Świetlik and Marta Magnucka (a Ph.D. student) is that aging plastic pipes “release particles of plastic into water.” No other study we’ve seen, in over 50 years of rigorous scientific research, has ever shown this to occur. Ever. PVC pipe is a rigid material that doesn't “peel” the way SPM would like people to believe. Any discovery of microparticles found in municipal water supplies must take other sources into account – sources that may not have been considered in their work. 

Reputable media outlets have a responsibility to challenge study conclusions drawn from agenda-driven organizations that contradict decades of rigorous science before spoon-feeding them to unwitting readers. Outlets should take the time to investigate whether claims withstand scientific scrutiny before giving them the credibility they sometimes don’t deserve. That regrettably didn’t happen over at Mechanical Hub, which took SPM’s bait and reported the Polish study and SPM’s conclusions without doing any real reporting at all. 

We’ll be watching Safe Piping Matters, the outlets that cover them, and the flawed studies they promote, to advance the cause of a more accurate discourse on PVC pipe.

When It Comes To PVC, Media Prefers Assumptions Over Science

The media routinely and needlessly alarms parents about the risks of chemical exposure. Reporters who write chemophobic news stories of this sort follow a predictable pattern: craft a hyperbolic headline; use loaded terms like “harmful” and “toxic” without defining them; imply that children are in harm’s way even if they aren’t; quote an expert to give the story superficial credibility.

Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN) followed this routine to the letter in a deeply misleading story about a new report published by scientists in the European Union (EU). “Harmful compounds lurk in childcare products, EU report says,” the article’s headline announced. The author mentioned vinyl chloride (VCM), a chemical used to manufacture PVC, as one such substance found in children’s products.  

The problem? There isn’t a single piece of credible evidence to support that allegation.  

Ignoring evidence

The C&EN story makes no mention of the fact that removing VCM is actually part of the PVC manufacturing process. The residual quantities are so negligible that scientists often can’t detect vinyl chloride in finished PVC products. Independent studies and research conducted by the FDA have confirmed this fact many times in recent years:

“Surveys of recent [PVC] resin data, reviews of pipe product certification reports, and recent food package testing by the [FDA] show that current residual vinyl chloride monomer (RVCM) levels in all grades of PVC resin typically are significantly below acceptable levels and that resulting fabricated products are typically at nondetect levels…”

The C&EN article contains several odd statements that make perfect sense in light of this information. For instance, the story reports that “the exposure of people who use the products in question is assumed and does not need to be specifically measured.” Elsewhere the author notes that “scientists assumed that children could be exposed to harmful compounds in childcare products.”

“In other cases,” the author writes, ”the compounds themselves were not directly detected but were instead suspected.” The story goes on to quote an ECHA toxicologist as saying “it’s possible that some vinyl chloride could be left in the polyvinyl chloride used to make a product such as a changing pad.”

By “assuming” and “suspecting” the “possible” presence of a compound that “could” pose a risk to children, EU officials skipped a fundamental aspect of the scientific method: drawing conclusions based on sound evidence. Worse, C&EN took the bait by promoting the flawed views of the study’s authors with a tantalizing headline that deceives parents about the safety of PVC.  

Conclusion

Scientists have a responsibility to base their findings on facts, not speculation. LIkewise, journalists have an obligation to question those findings before auto-reporting them to an unwitting public. At the very least, readers expect media outlets to include an industry comment, which regrettably didn’t happen here. 

When it comes to chemical safety, the media often ignores science and exaggerates the risks consumers face. News reports that make unfounded claims about threats to children aren’t journalism; they’re propaganda designed to push an agenda. 

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.