👏Grassroots Advocates Flex Their Muscles to Help BAN Vinyl Chloride 💪🏽
📽️Get in on the Action by Hosting a Free Earth Month Screening of “Blue Vinyl” 🌍
Leaders from Beyond Plastics Greater Boston, Beyond Plastics Sullivan County, Beyond Plastics Queens and affiliated organizations Move Past Plastic, and Sustainable Tucson all delivered compelling public comments on February 20th, during an EPA webinar on the five chemicals currently undergoing prioritization under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). These fearless speakers urged the EPA to prioritize vinyl chloride for risk evaluation and ultimately ban the known human carcinogen which threatens every community along its extensive travel route. They drove home that it is important that ALL risks are considered in a comprehensive review including accidental releases, spills, and transportation incidents, which EPA historically hasn’t included in their assessments.
As Beyond Plastics Sullivan County lead, Rebekah Creshkoff shared during the webinar, “The Upper Delaware has a high degree of ecological integrity, supporting a vast population of aquatic insects and trout. It is a fly fisher's paradise. River-based tourism and recreation is central to the local economy. My backyard is another story. Railroad tracks run along the length of my property. A freight train with 30 to 40 tanker cars passes by almost every night. When it goes by during the day, you can see those tanker cars bear placards indicating that they are carrying hazardous materials. My bedroom is just 100 yards away from those tracks. I used to enjoy being awakened by the whistle of a distant train, and then drifting in and out of sleep as it approached. But now I wake up and wonder, "Is this train going to derail? Are we going to be another East Palestine?"
A resident of East Palestine, Ohio watches the plume of smoke following the (disastrous) decision to open burn the vinyl chloride after draining it from the derailed Norfolk Southern train cars in February 2023. Photo by Gene Puskar, Associated Press.
Rebekah also pointed out that the time to ban vinyl chloride is way past due — “EPA has known for 50 years that vinyl chloride is a human carcinogen. Fifty years ago, I was in high school and Nixon was president.”
It was in the 1970s that the White House Council on Environmental Quality and EPA officials raised serious concerns about the health impacts of vinyl chloride. Interestingly, it was due to these concerns that Congress drafted a bill aimed to ensure chemicals were safely made and used, which ultimately led to passage of the “original” Toxics Substances Control Act (TSCA) in 1976. And yet, vinyl chloride remains largely unregulated under the very law it inspired.
Eileen Ryan, lead of Beyond Plastics Greater Boston reminded everyone in the webinar the very limited ban that was instituted at that time and a reason why there wasn’t further action taken stating, “In 1974 vinyl chloride was banned in air sprays and other propellants. However, in the year 2000 when the EPA reviewed the toxicity of vinyl chloride it did so with substantial input from the chemical industry which convinced the EPA to downplay vinyl chloride as a known carcinogen. In 2002, the film Blue Vinyl was released, documenting the perils of PVC plastics from manufacture to disposal. I watched this film in the early 2000s and have avoided PVC plastics ever since. The toxicity of vinyl chloride has been clear for over 75 years. It's time for change.”
Victoria Augustine of Beyond Plastics Queens pointed even further back into history to stress how long public health agencies have ignored the science, "Finally, in 1930, Public Health Reports published a study called, 'Acute Response of Guinea Pigs to Vapors of Some New Commercial Organic Compounds: Vinyl Chloride.' 1930 was almost 100 years ago! In 1962, Rachel Carson published her seminal book Silent Spring on the deadly effects of DDT. In 1972, only ten years later, the EPA banned DDT in the United States. Let's take a lesson."
Vinyl chloride is used to make PVC pipes, vinyl siding, windows and flooring, packaging, furniture and car parts, children's toys, pet toys, shower curtains, credit cards, gift cards and many other consumer goods. It is also a toxic chemical that is a well-established carcinogen, linked to liver, brain, lung, breast and blood cancers. Exposure to vinyl chloride can lead to neurological effects such as dizziness, drowsiness, confusion, and can even result in death after short-term exposure. When it is burned, as five train cars full of vinyl chloride were following the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio just over a year ago, it poses additional hazards, as it can generate highly toxic byproducts such as phosgene and hydrogen chloride, resulting in severe chemical burns and long-term respiratory damage and possibly death.
Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is made with the carcinogenic chemical vinyl chloride. PVC is used widely in consumer products, building materials, and more.
Why are manufacturers still using this dangerous chemical to make products we use in our homes? Why is it being carted around by rail through miles and miles of backyards? Why does it continue to be produced and disposed of in low income communities of color? Rachana Shah, mother of two, co-President of Beyond Plastics Queens and and a Zero Waste Consultant and Educator, spoke to the environmental injustice in her oral comment to EPA,
“President Biden released an Executive Order in April of 2023 that states “ To fulfill our Nation’s promises of justice, liberty, and equality, every person must have clean air to breathe; clean water to drink; safe and healthy foods to eat; and an environment that is healthy, sustainable, climate-resilient, and free from harmful pollution and chemical exposure.”
Yet plastics are EVERYWHERE. There is no separation between human bodies and pollutants, but instead a mutual and ongoing co-becoming…we are becoming plastic people. The fact that low-income communities, often Black and brown, are the victims of little to no regulation over highly dangerous chemicals like VC, shows how pollution and colonialism are tied together”.
The Biden Administration’s Just40 Initiative and a lot of cajoling from environmental and environmental justice groups helped lead us to a pivotal moment in December 2023 when EPA announced that it was beginning the process to prioritize five chemicals for risk evaluation under TSCA— one being vinyl chloride. If it is designated as a High-Priority Substance at the end of the 9- to 12-month long time frame required by law, the Agency will then begin the risk evaluation.
It is crucial that this initial step happens to continue the process under TSCA. That is why during the month of April (aka “Earth Month”), we are inviting groups to host their own local screenings of the award-winning documentary film,Blue Vinyl: The World’s First Toxic Comedy (2002). The screenings will help us get the word out about the hazards and our campaign to BAN vinyl chloride. Following the local screenings, Beyond Plastics will be hosting a power hour of action. Stay tuned to email for more details on that!
Blue Vinyl may be over twenty years old but it is still an eye opener with an engaging and personal storyline. Turned off by her parents’ decision to put vinyl siding on their small Long Island house, director Judith Helfand takes viewers on her 5-year adventure across the United States and to Europe to get the back story on vinyl.
Along the way she meets area residents who suffer from cancer and respiratory ailments–shining a spotlight on environmental justice years before the term became popular. She shows how they became empowered to test local air quality using simple buckets–soon discovering how vinyl chloride in the air often exceeded limits, limits that are arbitrary because there is no safe level of exposure to vinyl chloride.
If you would like to hold a free screening in your community, please fill out this form ASAP to reserve a screening license. We will then send you a link which you can use for either an in-person screening or a simultaneous Zoom screening (individual home viewing with the link is not allowed). You can then get started by booking a venue and promoting using our handy Blue Vinyl Screening Toolkit which includes a flier template, a sample media advisory and everything you need for a catchy social media post.
If you have questions, please reach out to our community organizers, Christina Dubin or Nyah Estevez.
Further Reading
Vinyl chloride fact sheet (Beyond Plastics, 2023)
Vinyl Chloride (IARC monograph, 2012)
PVC Poison Plastic (Toxic-Free Futures, 2023)
U.S. EPA Takes First Step in Potentially Banning Vinyl Chloride (Beyond Plastics, 12/14/23)
Chemical plant emissions driving cancer risk near Western Kentucky elementary, EPA says (Louisville Courier-Journal, 1/24/24)
Toxic Cargo: How rail transport of vinyl chloride puts millions at risk, an analysis one year after the Ohio train derailment (Toxic-Free Future, 2024)
Millions of Americans face risk of a toxic ‘bomb train’ (Washington Post, 1/29/24)