California mulls statewide PVC packaging ban

18 July 2008 22:44  [Source: ICIS news]

HOUSTON (ICIS news)--A bill introduced in the California legislature that would ban polyvinyl chloride (PVC) packaging by 2015 would do more economic damage to the state than any of the alleged environmental benefits would justify, a chemical trade group said on Friday.

The call to ban PVC packaging in California is a product of misguided beliefs about the health risks of PVC, said the Vinyl Institute, a trade group.

However, the bill’s author, Assemblywoman Julia Brownley (Democrat-Santa Monica), insists that PVC leaches dioxin, a known carcinogen, and contains chemicals that pose a public health risk.

The bill, AB 2505, is currently pending in the Senate Appropriations Committee and has already been approved in the legislature’s lower house, the California State Assembly, according to Brownley’s website.

Californians Against Waste, the nonprofit organization sponsoring the bill, maintains that PVC contains toxic lead, cadmium and phthalates. However, the Vinyl Institute said these allegations are based on inaccurate information from Greenpeace, not on scientific fact.

“Dioxin emissions to the environment have declined for decades, even as PVC production and use have soared, contradicting assertions that PVC is a major dioxin source,” said Allen Blakey, spokesman for the Vinyl Institute.

Blakey said PVC is used to make blood bags for hospitals and to transport drinking water - two unlikely applications for a supposedly toxic material.

PVC packaging and products in the US are generally stabilised with compounds based on tin, barium, calcium or zinc - not lead or cadmium, the Vinyl Institute said in a statement.

Moreover, the Institute maintains that phthalates have been used safely in myriad flexible PVC applications for decades without causing hormonal effects in humans. 

Despite the efforts of the Vinyl Institute to confront what it asserts are poorly fabricated myths about PVC, the thermoplastic polymer is continually attacked by environmental groups such as Greenpeace and Californians Against Waste.

Yet the Vinyl Institute and PVC producers have allies of their own, including Greenpeace co-founder and former leader Patrick Moore, who recently came to the defence of PVC in an editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle.

“While my former Greenpeace colleagues have made the indefensible decision to attack PVC and have promoted bans such as this one, the material has been used safely and reliably for decades in packaging and products,” Moore wrote on 16 June. “I can tell you that PVC is one of the most sustainable, versatile and cost-effective materials available.”

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By: Greg Holt
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