Blue Vinyl
Reader Ingrid turned me on to the 2002 Sundance Film Festival documentary winner, Blue Vinyl. (I was about to order it online, but will check around my local Barnes & Noble first.)
If you don’t know how EVIL PVC is already (and that’s not lower-case, sotto voce evil, it’s EEEEEV-EEEEEEL; pretend you’re Antonio Bandaras really working the bile), trust me it is. The production of polyvinyl chloride, or PVC (also commonly known as “vinyl”) releases a cancer-causing compound known as dioxin during its manufacturing process, the life of the product, all the way to its final disposal. Dioxin is very persistent carcinogen that settles in our fatty tissues and those of other animals. Besides causing cancer, exposure to dioxins can also lead to neurological damage, respiratory problems, liver and kidney failure, plus all kinds of reproductive- and immune-system damage, including birth defects.
If you have PVC flooring or the ubiquitous vinyl siding, chances are your children will develop asthma, too. Fun stuff. It’s the plant workers and low-income families living near PVC factories who have it the worst, however.
Since dioxin is a bioaccumulative toxin that doesn’t breakdown easily and can be rapidly dispersed by winds, dioxins from a PVC manufacturing plant could migrate and land up in fish, increasing in concentration as they work their way up the food chain to the top-dog predator of them all—us.
Plus, when you heat PVC, the chlorine is released as hydrogen chloride, which turns into hydrochloric acid. This is also why you shouldn’t mix PVC with your plastic recyclables.
When PVC is made, it needs to be stabilized by chemical additives such as lead, cadmium, and pthlates. This is why there was so much concern about the presence of lead in children’s vinyl lunchboxes, since these toxins can leach, flake, or outgas from PVC over time, resulting in anything from asthma to lead poisoning to cancer. (Don’t let your kids play with PVC toys especially—it will only bring you to a dark place of tears and the gnashing of teeth.)
Disposing of vinyl is tricky—you can’t burn it as I noted before, nor can you stick it in the landfill because it could leach into the groundwater and release toxic emissions in landfill gases. Trying to recycle it will only contaminate the entire plastics-recycling process. The best you can do is call your municipal waste-disposal office and have them divert your PVC waste to landfills specially marked for hazardous waste. (This is where our faketastic Christmas tree is headed soon.)
Bill Walsh, founder of the Healthy Building Network wrote in Grist that “the weight of available evidence tells us that … it may well be the single most important source of many of the worst toxic chemicals plaguing the global environment today.” The full report is here.
More about the life cycle of PVC here.
The Worsted Witch » Blue Vinyl Redux said,
March 13, 2006 at 10:48 am
[...] D’OH. They have Blue Vinyl at my local library, and so I’ve placed a hold on it instead of dropping cash on a purchase. Verily, a lifetime of conditioning is hard to shake—my first impulse was to order the movie online because I belong to a generation that is used to, and lo, demands, instant gratification. (And, until I realized how much fuel and packaging went into feeding my online-shopping fix, I was so out of control that the hub was thisclose to staging an intervention. With sock puppets, because that’s the only way you can guarantee my attention.) [...]
The Worsted Witch » Present State of Mind said,
March 28, 2006 at 2:45 pm
[...] I don’t want stuff for my birthday or Christmas this year, I told him. This October I want to finally dance along the cranberry bogs of the Pine Barrens, wearing a misshapen tin-foil crown with paper stars and dubbing myself the “Cranberry Queen.” I want to take in, breathe in scenes I’ve only pictured in my head, second-hand, and maybe, if my courage doesn’t flag, sniff out the trail of the Jersey Devil. If anyone asks you what I want, I said, tell them I want them to watch Blue Vinyl or read Cradle to Cradle or The Ecology of Commerce. [...]
The Worsted Witch » Green: The Color of Money said,
March 30, 2006 at 2:53 pm
[...] One of the central themes of Blue Vinyl really resonated with me. (And seriously, people, I can’t recommend this movie any more if the producers threatened to stab my own mother in the face.) Where does environmentalism end and social justice begin? [...]
The Worsted Witch » Green: The Color of Money said,
March 30, 2006 at 2:53 pm
[...] One of the central themes of Blue Vinyl really resonated with me. (And seriously, people, I can’t recommend this movie any more if the producers threatened to stab my own mother in the face.) Where does environmentalism end and social justice begin? [...]
The Worsted Witch » This Landfill Was Made For You And Me said,
April 6, 2006 at 1:33 pm
[...] Because my office is getting ready for The Big Move, people have been cleaning out their offices and cubicles like the Second Coming of Martha Stewart and her poncho posse were coming over for an impromptu inspection. (We have five large black dumpsters, lined up like recalcitrant circus caravans, moodily crowding the hallway.) Recent … ahem … acquisitions of mine include a brand-new stainless steel thermos (obviously company swag), a small wicker basket with handle, a beer glass, a vintage “The Saint” paperback, a massive folder full of empty (possibly vinyl) CD sleeves, and a TON of packing paper. [...]
The Worsted Witch » Build it Green said,
April 14, 2006 at 7:19 pm
[...] This is community action at its some of its best. Pure genius! I wish I had known about this ahead of time because we’ve already made plans for tomorrow (including stopping by Earth Day New York), but dude, I TOTALLY signed up for their volunteer mailing list. I strongly feel that green housing should not be a privilege, but a basic human right, and we need to find a way to build healthy communities cost-effectively, especially in low-income neighborhoods. (The use of toxic PVC materials is widespread in the construction industry—including Habitat for Humanity—because of its affordability. But no matter how you spin it, it’s still class discrimination.) For the rest of us, a nonprofit store like this is a great way to build without contributing anything new to the waste stream, so this is one of those rare occasions where I tell you to GO NUTS SHOPPING. [...]
green LA girl » A kinder binder said,
April 16, 2006 at 1:56 pm
[...] I posed this question to Brad of Sustainable Group, a lil Seattle company that makes eco-friendly office supplies. Their products — the Rebinder, made of recycled corrugated cardboard, and Repockets, made of recycled chipboard — avoid toxic vinyl like the plague. [...]
The Worsted Witch » Maybe Baby said,
May 10, 2006 at 8:08 am
[...] 4. Avoid PVC/vinyl like the plague. [...]
The Worsted Witch » Vinyl Destination said,
May 17, 2006 at 6:36 pm
[...] Knowing what I know about the insidious putridity of polyvinyl chloride (alias vinyl, alias PVC)—that dozens of vinyl fabricators have succumbed to the exceedingly rare angiosarcoma of the liver over the decades, or that if your house catches on fire, you’ll die from the toxic hydrogen chloride fumes released by your vinyl siding in minutes, before the flames even have a chance to reach you—I hork up a hairball every time I see a crafting sister- or brother-in-arms make otherwise wonderful creations with PVC. [...]
The Worsted Witch » Paper Nor Plastic said,
July 25, 2006 at 8:27 pm
[...] The bags at Paper Nor Plastic remind me a great deal of the ones I already use to bag my groceries—down to the nifty way both heavy-duty types fold to the size of a flattened brown paper bag—and I wouldn’t be surprised if they shared the same manufacturer. One notable difference, however: The ACME Earth Tote is made from Cordura nylon, while Paper Nor Plastic’s are made from vinyl-backed polyester. Both nylon and polyester are petroleum-derived, which admittedly isn’t terribly sustainable in the first place, but we all know how I feel in particular about vinyl, that most vile of textiles. [...]
The Worsted Witch » Billboard Lunch Sack said,
August 28, 2006 at 6:40 pm
[...] Although this lunchbag uses vinyl-laminated nylon fabric, I don’t mind its materials as much because they’re salvaged from old billboards. It’s even lined with mill-end fabric, which ordinarily would be considered manufacturing waste. Relan, which is based in Minnesota rescues approximately 8 tons of billboard and banner material from landfills and incinerators annually. (Chemical additives used to stabilize PVC, such as lead, cadmium, and pthlates, along with carcinogenic dioxins, can leach into the groundwater and release toxic emissions via landfill gases. Burning PVC lets loose hydrogen chloride gas, which turns into hydrochloric acid—the stuff of acid rain.) [...]
The Worsted Witch » Mail Call: Nontoxic Shower Curtains said,
October 16, 2006 at 2:42 pm
[...] Related articles: 1. Sam Suds and the Case of PVC 2. The Poison Plastic 3. Blue Vinyl [...]