When a Norfolk Southern train derailed last February in East Palestine, Ohio, igniting a chemical fire and releasing 1 million pounds of toxic vinyl chloride into the surrounding air and water, politicians rushed to express their support for the impacted community. Within a month, senators introduced the bipartisan 2023 Railway Safety Act, a crucial effort to strengthen safety regulations for the transportation of hazardous materials.
In the year since the disaster, vinyl chloride has also faced heightened scrutiny. But despite a newfound focus on the chemical’s dangers, the market for vinyl products is continuing to grow. Major petrochemical companies are expanding their operations — and the vinyl industry is spending more money than ever before to lobby lawmakers on its talking points.
Vinyl chloride is a key building block for the production of polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, a plastic found in a range of construction materials, medical devices, and household items. For decades, environmental advocates have sounded the alarm over PVC, calling it the “poison plastic”: In addition to vinyl chloride, which is classified as a Group A human carcinogen by the Environmental Protection Agency, PVC contains harmful additives like phthalates and flame retardants. The production process releases massive amounts of greenhouse gases, exposes workers to asbestos and the class of industrial “forever chemicals” known as PFAS, and sends toxic pollutants into front-line communities.
“There’s been growing interest to regulate vinyl chloride, PVC plastic, and its additives at the state level, the national level, and the international level over the last year,” said Mike Schade, a campaign director for Toxic-Free Future, who has co-authored multiple reports on the dangers of producing, transporting, and disposing of vinyl chloride. “We’re definitely concerned that, at the same time as we’re learning more and more about the dangers of vinyl chloride and the chemicals associated with its life cycle, the plastics industry has been expanding in recent years, including the PVC plastics industry.”
Betting on More Plastic
Amid growing calls to phase out fossil fuels, the industry is now betting on plastic — created using petroleum-derived chemicals like vinyl chloride — as a lifeline.
In recent years, OxyVinyls — a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum — Formosa Plastics, and Shintech have announced billion-dollar plans to expand their PVC plastic operations. Four months after the East Palestine disaster, chemical manufacturer Orbia declared its intentions to build a massive vinyl plant in the United States before 2028.
Most petrochemical operations, including PVC plants, are sited in the Gulf Coast region, where marginalized communities bear the brunt of industrial pollution. Exposure to vinyl chloride is associated with an increased risk of liver, brain, and lung cancer, as well as lymphoma and leukemia. When vinyl chloride burns, it can cause even more harm, releasing a highly toxic class of chemical compounds known as dioxins.
A 2023 Toxic-Free Future report noted that at least four low-income communities of color in Louisiana have been forced to relocate due to contamination from the vinyl plastics industry. This includes Mossville, one of the first towns founded by freed slaves in the South. Toxicology tests conducted by the federal government determined that Mossville residents, living in the shadow of pollution from vinyl chloride manufacturers, had elevated levels of dioxins in their bodies.
That testing was completed in 1998. But the devastation wrought by vinyl chloride is ongoing: In January, the EPA released a risk assessment detailing findings of toxic emissions near a Westlake Chemical vinyl plant in Calvert City, Kentucky. After collecting air monitoring data for more than a year, the EPA determined that emissions exceeded the state’s acceptable levels of lifetime cancer risk.
The findings arrive two months after Westlake made headlines for a different reason: The company is investing $134 million to expand its PVC pipe plant in Wichita Falls, Texas.
Yvette Arellano, founder and director of the grassroots environmental justice organization Fenceline Watch, noted that the Houston area has also seen “massive investments” from petrochemical companies in recent years. The 52-mile Houston Ship Channel is already one of the country’s most polluted areas, home to more than 600 manufacturers of plastics and plastic feedstocks.
Last month, Amnesty International released a report that found the severity of toxic pollution in the Houston Ship Channel amounts to a human rights violation.
“The expansion in the Houston Ship Channel is largely fueled by the plastics industry, including PVC and vinyl,” said Arellano. “We’re talking about a public health threat that’s multiplied because of the cumulative impact of these facilities.”
Increased Lobbying
In 2022, OxyVinyls, Shintech, Westlake, and Formosa collectively released more than half a million pounds of vinyl chloride into the air, according to an analysis of Toxic Release Inventory data by Material Research. But as members of the Vinyl Institute, the leading lobbying group for the PVC and vinyl chloride industry, the four companies are fighting hard to convince lawmakers that PVC is safe and sustainable.
While the group has been active on Capitol Hill for decades, it upped its federal lobbying spend to $560,000 last year. According to disclosures, lobbyists met with lawmakers to discuss topics like the regulation of polyvinyl chloride and the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, which seeks to reduce the production of single-use plastics. The Vinyl Institute opposes the act, rallying for unproven chemical recycling technologies over source reduction strategies.
At the state level, the Vinyl Institute’s website boasts that it “worked close with state partners to slow down or stop PVC bans around the nation.” Legislation introduced in Maine, California, and New York last year in the wake of the East Palestine derailment sought to ban the use of PVC and other toxic substances in consumer packaging. Maine’s bill quickly died and California’s went dormant; New York’s was referred to the Environmental Conservation Committee earlier this month.
“Our industry is committed to improving our sustainable practices. Over three decades the industry has decreased ambient emissions of vinyl chloride by 87 percent per unit,” the Vinyl Institute wrote in response to questions from The Intercept. “While many unfortunately equate the state of the industry in the 1970s to today, we have made great strides in worker safety and emissions reductions in the five decades since, and part of our state efforts is to ensure lawmakers are making decisions with up-to-date scientific data.”
PVC was also challenged at the international level last year, as the United Nations Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution convened twice to discuss the proposed Global Plastics Treaty. The European Union and dozens of countries have advocated for a PVC ban.
“Our team was on the ground at these meetings,” states the Vinyl Institute’s site, “to educate delegates on the positive impact that PVC products have on human rights, equity and public health around the globe.”
Fenceline Watch has also been an observer at the treaty discussions, pushing for an approach to plastic management that protects human health and the environment. Arellano noted that the United States has taken a more “business-friendly approach” to the discussions — a “complete opposite stance” from small Pacific Island nations, which must contend with huge amounts of the world’s plastic washing up on their shores.
“A ban on PVC would harm developing nations and undermine the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals,” the Vinyl Institute wrote to The Intercept. “We all agree with the overarching goal of eliminating plastic waste, and the Vinyl Institute is present at these meetings to educate the global community on the importance of PVC products in health care and clean drinking water.”
Meanwhile, the petrochemical industry is ramping up efforts to undermine the EPA: In 2023, the Vinyl Institute sued the agency over an order it issued under the reformed Toxic Substances Control Act, or TSCA. The EPA designated 1,1,2-trichloroethane, a potentially carcinogenic chemical used to create vinyl chloride, as a “high priority” for risk evaluation and instructed companies to perform new toxicity tests on birds — something the Vinyl Institute has called “unnecessary,” “unjustified,” and “improper.”
That hasn’t stopped the EPA from putting vinyl chloride itself in its crosshairs. On December 14, the agency announced it had added the chemical to its list of priorities for formal review under the TSCA, a step that could potentially lead to an eventual vinyl chloride ban.
“We really need to be transitioning away from toxic petrochemicals and dangerous petrochemical plastics like vinyl, especially when we know there are viable, safer alternatives,” said Schade. “I think the tide is beginning to turn, and I think the East Palestine disaster this last year was a real wakeup call.”
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