The Battle Over PVC

The "no hard evidence" is not exactly true.

Vinyl Chloride and phthalate gases are extremely toxic, and destroy the liver, that mechanism being well understood.

All plastics release gases, PVC releases toxix gases slowly over the lifetime of the plastic article.

Other plastics are dangerous too, common food wraps also releasing deadly phthalate gas.

Soft PVC Toys, plastic food wrap & some medical devices

Dangerously Toxic

Kind Regards....

Biggest problem here in the US is the people who champion this issue are enamored with embracing "bad science", and there are are ersatz scientists to provide what these people want to hear, and profit from it, along with garnering press attention that they would have never achieved in any other means.

Look at the city makeing the most fuss here over this - San Francisco, California.

This is a city known for its liberal extremes, prides itself on its 'alternative lifestyles' and such, glorifiying Haight-Ashbury and the drug use of those days in the 70's, allows a murder suspect to walk on a 'Twinkie' defence, and their inhabitants feel that the rest of us are wrong, and we would all be better off if we would let these people run things and protect us from ourselves.

Given that these people as a whole are not given to listening to logic or reason, let alone acknowledge its existance, I'm not going to worry about this so-called problem, and I'd suspect that many of us will follow suit.

I agree. Most of the things I read and hear seem to be based on an ignorance of plastics in general. The problems with PVC are obvious. I machine PVC from time to time, and can smell the chlorine as it is being cut. In fact the fumes coming off of the material cause the exposed steel parts of the mill spindle and tool holders to rust. Also, the cutters dull much more quickly than with other non abrasive materials. You can't compare PVC with say polyethylene which is really nothing more than high density paraffin. You could chew on it all day and get nothing from it. Each individual material should be considered for it's chemical makeup, and properties and used in product designs accordingly. Now we have products being made in countries that have no rules, and people here writing articles about them who have no real knowledge for a public that is almost completely ignorant.

I am often shocked at the ignorance of the general public. Most people handle hundreds of products each day made of plastics, metals and other materials, but have no idea as to how those products came into existence. Then that same public reads an article or worse hears something on the news written by some journalist who didn't bother to do any real research. Next thing you know, the public believes that all plastics are bad and ought to be banned.

I could really get going on this. Rampant public ignorance is like a disease in this country and it affects every facet of our lives.

Hello Blink

Your answer deserves a GA point, good for you.

Kind Regards....

It was not my commentary that labeled San Franciscans as nut cases.

It is not the legitimate articles by PhD. chemists and MDs that I am referring to in my comment. The mass panic is caused when an article by one of those qualified people about the properties of a specific plastic is mis-interpreted and used to label all plastic as having the same problem. You mentioned lead and cadmium. We don't ban the use of all metals because of the health hazards of lead. Each material, especially plastic has a different set of properties both positive and negative. I believe that this is a very important issue for our health and the environment. It is not an easy issue to tackle because there are so many different materials that fall under the label of plastics. The question then is how do we educate the the general public with at least basic knowledge for purposes of safety and environmentally safe recycling? How do we get manufacturers to use some good sense and responsibility in choosing materials and hold them accountable for not doing so?

One of the big problems I see is the mis-labeling of products. I remember seeing a label that said "Lexan is better than plastic". So, since when is polycarbonate "Lexan" not plastic? I see cans labeled "fiberglass resin". There is simply no such thing! The resin is polyester and used with fiberglass cloth. Here is another one, Styrofoam cups. Again there is no such thing. Drinking cups are made from expanded styrene beads. I know these are small issues, but they do contribute to the public ignorance.

I would just like to see truth without exaggeration, the spreading of knowledge without creating panic.

It was not my commentary that labeled San Franciscans as nut cases.

Your commentary, in response to Locksmith's, begins "I agree."

Maybe I should have been more specific as to what I agree with, but you might notice that in both responses, I wrote about PLASTICS, not San Francisco. Any opinion I may have on San Francisco, I have kept to myself. My opinions on plastics however are based on education and experience. They are non political and consistent with the original thread.

"I'd agree that there is a great deal public ignorance, but I think that labeling San Franciscans as nut-cases and failing to understand the very real hazards of toxic chemicals contributes to, rather than ameliorates, that ignorance."

Then you've never heard the oft-repeated joke that is more truth than humor regarding that city:

Why is San Francisco like a bowl of granola? What isn't fruits and nuts, is flakes!

I for one have no intention of lending any credibility, or having any scientific faith anything coming out San Francisco. It's bad enough that many parts of the country have to suffer for poor and misguided decisions made in the People's Republic of California.

Any car buff has horror stories of that state. Modify your car engine for performance, and their laws didn't care if it still met emmisions standards, it's wasn't factory, so off with it!

Nevermind the science, the State can be a prick in the name of ecology, and you can whine all you want, but we're smarter than you'll ever be, so do it our way, OR ELSE!

And I'm supposed to buy into California's ban on pthaletes and such-NOT!

The sooner this country stops catering to those tree-buggers, the better!

tree-buggers.. !!!!

I like hugging trees but wouldn't get so intimate as to bugger one...

Trees are usefull in sooo many ways.

Del

Hate to tell you this, Mr. Poopy-Pants, but just in the Bay Area alone, we have three of the most prestigious teaching hospitals in the World - SFSU, Stanford, and UC Berkeley.

Also, we must be doing something right, considering if we were our own country, we'd be the 6th richest nation in the World. And, let's see... Where do you come from? Oh, that's right, Milwaukee! Hey, is that beer still making you guys famous?

I don't think you are being fair to Milwaukee. I did an extensive web search, and found several good things about Milwaukee:

1. It is the home of Shlitz, the beer that made Milwaukee famous. Unfortunately, Schlitz is now a has-been in the beer world. But it remains true that if you want to visit a city that makes you want to get drunk, Milwaukee should be high on your list.

2. Harley Davidson, the motorcycle with a rep for shaking itself to pieces, made it easy for the Japanese to take over the motorcycle industry here. It remains at the top of the list of unreliable motorcycles, per JD Powers. The fact that Harleys are incredibly slow* must be a safety advantage too.

3. Jeffrey Dahmer, the guy who made cannibalism fun again, is the source of many jokes. The city of Milwaukee raised more than $400,000 to by his effects.

4. I think that Milwaukee can bask in the reflected glow of the Fox River, which flows through Green Bay, and which has some of the highest levels of PCBs of any river in the nation. Eating fish from this river gives you about the same cancer risk as smoking 2-3 packs of cigarettes a day! That the people of Green Bay willingly enter into this grizzly experiment to show just how damaging PCBs can be should be a source of pride for every Wisconsinite.

So, while the Milwaukee area is far worse than San Francisco in terms of per capita income, percentage of well-educated people, and many other traditional measures of city desirability, I hope you can see that Milwaukee has its own non-traditional charms, as enumerated in the list above.

* Back when I was racing a 350 Honda in endurance road races, we could beat anything through curves, but tricked-out Harleys (with almost three times the displacement) were among the few bikes we could blow past on the straights too.

1. Milwaukee is also the home of Pabst, Blatz, and Miller; and out baseball team is the Brewers. It is probably high up if not on top in the bars per capita measurement.

3. Though not from Milwaukee, Ed Gein was also from Wisconsin.

Good one!!!

I was wondering when cannibalism was going to be fun again!

No, we don't have those; they have those. We have the fruitiness that we are really best known for...and which others look to to determine...how not to run a state.

Sorry.

I have heard more than one Prof. in Chemistry say that whenever you connect a halogen with a hydrocarbon you're in for something nasty regarding life.

Should not that first sentence say 'SOME' scientists?

While it is easy for people, scientists, Doctors, and groups to jump on any bandwagon that sounds reasonable, it is better to error to the prevention of any danger than to error and cause any multitude of medical, environmental, etc dangers.

Remember the kids born with out arms?

Goodbye rainforests!

I must have made a wrong turn somewhere. I thought I was in a discussion about PVC.

Oh! I'm sorry. No, this is abuse. The argument is next door.

I can see how you might be confused. The question asked at the start of the blog was:

"How far does testing need to go before chemicals and materials are declared absolutely safe?"

From that, one could conclude that the thread was intended to be more about testing, and less about PVC in particular, with PVC concerns serving as an example. No one has answered that question directly, largely because it does not have a logical answer: no chemicals or materials are absolutely safe, and in this litigious age, no organization is likely to declare even distilled water absolutely safe.

However, as Sparkstation pointed out, PCV is considered particularly unsafe by many experts, and common plasticizers in PVC products contain phthalates, which are widely recognized as hazardous. As a result, PVC use in toys was banned in Europe in 2005.

Our Milwaukee Locksmith friend apparently thought that California, and San Francisco in particular, is somehow behind the concern over PVC -- although he produced no evidence to support that contention. The organization which has been pushing for PVC bans in the US most vocally is probably the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, which is based in New York, not California.

From the locksmith's post, which is so over the top in its San Fransisco bashing that one can only laugh, the discussion took a turn toward humor.

In these threads its easy to make a wrong turn, because the road can be twisty. When the initial question is too broad, theres no telling where a thread may lead.

I was going to go into a skit about my father flew B-17s during the battle over PVC. I decided to cease and desist after reading your reply. Excellent!

"How far does testing need to go before chemicals and materials are declared absolutely safe?"

You are right. I isn't really a very good question. A better question might be: what steps must we take to insure that safe materials are used for individual product applications. PVC is right up there with the worst. It doesn't take much thinking to figure out that it is not appropriate for toys, and a lot of other things that it is used for. Building materials is another area where some serious reform is needed. Just walk into a new mobile home or manufactured home and the fumes from some of the materials will just about knock you over.

I know this thread got a bit twisted, but I think it is worthy of discussion. Huge sectors of industry could be affected by bans on certain materials, but their eventual ban is inevitable. How can seriously dangerous materials be restricted without creating a panic and banning everything that falls under the label of plastic?

Correction of this problem will likely be a long slow process. Just look at how long it is taking to get smoking banned in restaurants.

By the way Ken, I will be visiting your "great town" of Atlanta next week for the Blade show where I have products on display. I was pleasantly surprised last year at how nice Atlanta is to visit.

I was pleasantly surprised last year at how nice Atlanta is to visit.

It is a really nice town in a lot of ways. Loads of trees (unfortunately disappearing too fast to put up McMansions -- I don't have the numbers, but it's staggering -- something like 1000 trees a day being cut down, I read). We're just north of Atlanta, and on a weekend day, we can get into the center of the city in 20 minutes. Drive the opposite direction for one hour and we can be in amazingly remote mountains. Where I am in the burbs, I can walk 1.5 miles down to the Chattahoochee river (I live here and can't spell it) through the woods without seeing a house.

Loads of things to do in the city and all around.

And then there is the traffic. That 20 minute weekend drive into the city can easily be 2 hours during rush hour -- which here, is more like three hours long at both ends of the day.

I used to live in Mars, PA (and Butler, and State College) by the way, and have spent a fair amount of time in the waters around Erie. (I am making the guess that you are in the town of North East, which is actually in north west PA??!!)

Oh, and back to the thread -- yes I agree, there is a lot of hyperbole, bad reporting, ignorance, etc surrounding not just material safety but environmental and health issues in general... and, of course almost every political issue. Remarkably, we get through it all, and in many ways we've made overall improvements -- although I find it easy to be nostalgic for the late fifties and early 60's...

...and then I remember the Cayahoga river catching on fire.

No, it's not that answers and rationales to the original question can't be posited; it's that it's too hard to get any so "broad" a community to stay focused on such a question; and that chemicals and materials are never, for most intents and purposes, declared "absolutely safe" (hence, the question is actually too narrow)--only (possibly to absolutely) un-safe. That is the (syntax) fallacy in the original question. A fine distinction, to be sure, but the pertinent one never the less.

AkJestshireCat

I really think it's a matter of knowledge. For many years, asbestos seemed to be the most inert, non-toxic, and handy material. It wasn't until much later that we learned of the deadliness of breathing it.

Who knows, in five or ten years, they may find latex to be the cause of terrible suffering. As our knowledge increases, so does our awareness.

It is really scary isn't it? The lead content of the silver used to fill the cavities in our teeth has been linked to behavioral problems like ADD. People are still scoffing at that one, but brain activity scans have shown that the issue is very serious.

I have been made very sick twice because of the fumes from cutting oil containing trichloroethane. That is why I am interested in the studies on PVC. Anytime you release chlorine fumes, and especially if you burn them or mix them with ammonia you are asking for big trouble. In WW1 they called it phosgene gas and used it as a weapon.

What's next?

Hello garyceng

The "silver fillings" in our teeth never contained lead.

The material commonly used was an amalgam of mercury silver and tin.

Over time the mercury leached out, and probably drove some folks crazy, as often happens with mercury poisoning.

The old expression: "Mad as a hatter" comes from liquid mercury being used in the felting process needed to make felt for hats.

At room temperature liquid mercury emits mercury vapour, which becomes organic mercury on being absorbed via the skin, ingested, or breathed in, nervous system damage occurs quite quickly.

That's why we shouldn't use the "energy-saving" compact fluorescent lamps, because of the free mercury escaping when they are broken or disposed of in landfills.

Kind Regards....

I stand corrected. I had heard mercury not lead. I must have been standing too close to my florescent lights. That is a good point about the energy saving lights that I had not heard. I did hear a rumor that soon there would be no more light bulbs made in the USA. Do you know anything about that?

California went non smoking in public places a long time ago, and New York just recently. It is in the Pennsylvania legislature now, and I am anxious forit to be passed.

True story, but weird... Then again, what's new as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, as a wee puff-ling, I had a yo-yo that was made of clear, colored plastic. One day I noticed that if I put my tongue against the plastic, my tongue would start to sting! I found that this also happened with screwdrivers whose handles were made of the same clear, colored plastic. So what the heck was that all about?!

Another one is the use of lead in gasoline (tetra-ethyl-lead). I grew up less than a block away from one of the highest trafficked freeways in Northern California!!! Look what it did to me!!!

I'm still thinking about checking with my doctor for a heavy metal analysis!

"Who knows, in five or ten years, they may find latex to be the cause of terrible suffering."

Hey, it has already been scientifically proven that using rubber during sex results in a falling birthrate.

Hello garyceng

In New Zealand smoking is banned in all public buildings, Hospitals, picture theatres (cinemas), restaurants, offices, schools, banks and the like.

Life for the non-smoker became much more pleasant, very quickly.

Thought you should know.

Kind Regards....

"...scientists say there is still no hard evidence to suggest danger in PVC, ..."; "...anti-PVC camp says its goal is the complete elimination of all PVC use, ..." "How far does testing need to go before chemicals and materials are declared absolutely safe?"

Sounds like a bunch of overzealous alarmists to me. There are enough of these types cases spread around the world so that no one country or state has a corner on them. They do tend to cluster in places where they can have influence though, so while California seems to have more than normal numbers of them, we should not attack all Californians. There are some Californians with sense, I've met one or two.

I'll wait for the scientists to decide.

Sure, you're always going to have a few reactionaries on either side. However, this might be a time for reassessment of the use of PVC. As there was a time for the reassessment of PCBs and asbestos and dioxin and...

Many products do pass the test and the fear subsides, but when they're bad, they're often really bad!!!

While it is easy to speak about removing PVC from the face of earth, think of alternative material for replacing PVC.

To start with, Pipes - alternates are stoneware, Cast Iron, Asbestos, Cement, Other plastics etc... where do the alternate materials stand in terms of cost of production, use of power to produce them, release of gases during production contributing to global warming, availability of raw materials to produce them, loss of power due to friction during operation, corrosion, transporting the material, flexibility and ease of assembly, weight per kg of liquid transported, recyclability, ease of conversion etc.. The list can be endless. If someone thinks of the above deeply then he will advice status quo.

Actually, there is no reason whatsoever to get rid of PVC. All one needs to do is replace the thylates (sp?). Europe did this years ago. Now, when PVC is made in China, they do two runs - one for Europe and one for the US. And the only reason why we don't pass a law banning thylates, is that Bush said he'd veto it... I wonder why?