The Story of Stuff - Annie Leonard [58]
PVC, aka Pernicious Vile Compound
Plastic is pretty much universally recognized as a problem these days, from the oil needed to produce it to the virtually immortal debris it leaves floating in our oceans. But not all plastics are created equal; some are more problematic than others. PVC plastic (polyvinyl chloride), commonly referred to as vinyl, is the most hazardous plastic at all stages of its life: from its production in the factory; to its use in our homes, schools, hospitals, and offices; to its disposal in our landfills or, worst of all, our incinerators. It’s also a cheap and versatile plastic, which are two reasons it continues to be widely used in spite of its negative environmental health impacts.
PVC has a variety of forms and textures and shows up in all kinds of places: fake leather shoes and purses, waterproof raincoats and boots, shiny bibs and aprons and tablecloths and shower curtains; garden furniture and hoses; food containers and wrapping; plastic-coated dish drying racks; vinyl siding and windows and pipes. It’s in medical supplies (tubing) and office supplies (binders). And it’s all around our kids in their toys and clothes.
Again we see toxic chlorine, which shows up in much of our Stuff. During PVC’s multistage production, chlorine gas is used to produce ethylene dichloride (EDC), which is converted into vinyl chloride monomer (VCM), which is converted into the PVC.97 This is a horrifically poisonous list of ingredients. Many studies have documented high rates of diseases among workers in vinyl chloride production facilities, including liver cancer, brain cancer, lung cancer, lymphomas, leukemia, and liver cirrhosis.98
PVC’s production process also releases a lot of toxic pollution into the environment, including dioxins. As I’ve mentioned, dioxins are a group of noxious chemicals that persist in the environment, travel great distances, build up in the food chain, and then cause cancer, as well as harm the immune and reproductive systems.
Additionally, because in its pure form PVC is actually a brittle plastic with limited use, further chemicals, or additives, need to be mixed in to make it pliable and expand its uses. These include neurotoxic heavy metals, like mercury and lead, and synthetic chemicals, like phthalates, which are known to cause reproductive disorders and are suspected to cause cancer.99 Since most of these additives don’t actually bond to the PVC at the molecular level, they slowly leak out, a process called leaching or off-gassing. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, these additives seep out of the PVC plastic, migrating from toys into our children, from packaging into our food, and from our shower curtains into the air we breathe.
In 2008, the Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ) released a study testing toxic chemicals that off-gassed from a new PVC shower curtain. CHEJ’s tests found 108 different volatile compounds released from the shower curtain into the air over twenty-eight days. The level of these compounds was sixteen times in excess of the indoor air quality levels recommended by the U.S. Green Building Council.100
But before you start a massive PVC purge of your surroundings, consider the last part of PVC’s miserable lifecycle: its disposal. We Americans toss out up to 7 billion tons of it per year, with 2 to 4 billion tons of that going to landfills.101 When PVC winds up in a landfill, it leaches its toxic additives into the soil, water, and air.
Dumping PVC is bad, but burning is even worse, since burning PVC produces the super toxin dioxin.102 Despite this fact, much burning of PVC isn’t accidental. It generally gets burned in one of four places: backyard or open burning, medical waste incinerators, municipal waste incinerators, or copper smelters (often scrap wire is