A report issued by a consortium of environmental advocacy groups in the United States warned of the health concerns of PVC plastic and advised public officials to avoid using it in community drinking water pipes. PVC is made from vinyl chloride, the same dangerous substance discharged in a flaming train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio, causing a public health and environmental calamity. It is also a carcinogen and an endocrine disruptor.
Nonetheless, due to its low cost, PVC – polyvinyl chloride – has become a popular choice for towns to replace aging drinking water pipes, particularly lead pipes and service lines, which pose their own public health problems. The Biden administration awarded $15 billion through the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Drinking Water State Revolving Fund for towns from coast to coast to replace lead service lines.
Contributors to the report chastised the EPA for failing to provide guidelines on which piping materials should be used for such projects.
“In the months and years ahead, this new federal money will be flowing to state and local governments, and it’s unfortunate the EPA is not providing any guidance on what is a safe substitute for lead service line pipes,” said Judith Enck, a former regional EPA administrator and the president of Beyond Plastics, a nonprofit environmental group based at Bennington College, Vermont.
Environmental Advocacy Groups Call for Safer Alternatives to PVC and CPVC in Drinking Water Pipes, Criticize EPA Standards
Beyond Plastics and two other nonprofit environmental advocacy groups, Environmental Health Sciences and the Plastic Pollution Coalition issued the research on Tuesday.
The EPA’s Dominique Joseph did not explicitly comment on the criticism, but she did state that the agency has no criteria for plumbing materials other than that they are lead-free. She said that the EPA “supports independent, third-party testing standards for plumbing materials under NSF/ANSI 61, which has been incorporated into many state and local plumbing codes
NSF is an abbreviation for the National Sanitation Foundation, and ANSI is for the American National Standards Institute.
According to Enck, the report raises real worries about the health repercussions of pollutants seeping from PVC pipes into drinking water. Instead of PVC or CPVC – chlorinated polyvinyl chloride – communities, according to Enck, should employ safer alternatives such as stainless steel or copper, even if those materials are more expensive.
“When people say that plastics is cheap, they are dead wrong,” Enck said at a virtual news conference Tuesday. “The price is paid widely and for decades through health care costs and tax dollars.”
Despite Health and Environmental Concerns, Global PVC Pipe Market Continues to Expand
Vinyl chloride was outlawed in aerosols by the Consumer Product Safety Commission in 1974, but the chemical is still utilized in other products and is a crucial component in PVC pipes.
According to various industry trend surveys, the global PVC pipe market is expanding, spurred in part by rising demand for PVC pipes in water, sewage, and irrigation projects.
In a 2021 study of more than 200 contractors, engineers, and municipal officials conducted by Accountability Information Management, a marketing research firm, PVC was named as the preferred material for water infrastructure projects. PVC pipes are expected to be used in roughly 65% of all water projects, according to respondents.
However, not all localities are using PVC. The city of Troy, New York, chose copper over lead for its service line replacement project, according to Frank Sainato, Troy’s assistant director of public affairs.
“We only use copper, because copper is tried and true,” he said. “It may cost more, but public safety is always worth the extra expense.”
Cities opt for PVC Alternatives citing Environmental and Health Concerns
According to Sainato, the city plans to break ground this year. According to public information director Barbara Pierce, Rochester, New York, which is only three hours to the west, also avoided PVC for its lead service line replacement program.
“The City of Rochester does not use PVC or CPVC for water service material, instead it uses copper and cross-linked polyethylene pipe, which does not contain polyvinyl chloride or vinyl chloride,” Pierce said in an email to USA TODAY.
“All water service pipe the City uses – along with all other materials used in the water system – is certified for use in potable water systems by the National Sanitation Foundation, AWWA, and approved for use by both USEPA and NYSDOH.”
A lady who answered the phone at the Uni-Bell PVC Pipe Association – a national nonprofit group that bills itself as “the authoritative source of information on PVC water, sewer, and reclaimed water pipe” – indicated no one there would be interested in commenting on the article.
A spokesman for the American Chemistry Council said in a statement to USA TODAY that PVC has 35-45% “less lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions compared to iron pipes, and PVC pipes used for delivering drinking water are certified by NSF International to conform to EPA safety regulations.”
Vinyl Chloride Production and PVC Compounds Leaching Pose Health and Environmental Risks
The assessment emphasized the health and environmental effects of the manufacture of vinyl chloride, which is used to make PVC, in addition to the health hazards posed by PVC compounds leaching into the water system.
During the virtual news conference, Mike Schade, program director of the environmental health research and advocacy nonprofit Toxic-Free Future, noted that the East Palestine train derailment is emblematic of that risk.
People in and around East Palestine have reported a variety of health complaints since the derailment on February 3, including headaches, sore throats, eye discomfort, and coughing.
People who reside near factories involved in the production of vinyl chloride, according to Schade, face these risks and more. He claims that these communities are disproportionately low-income and minority.
“It is deeply troubling that more than 10 billion pounds of vinyl chloride are produced in a year, and low-income communities and communities of color are bearing the brunt of these harmful exposures,” Schade said. “We all know that lead is toxic, but so is PVC pipe, which is known as the poison plastic. If EPA is truly committed to environmental justice, they would ban local and state governments from using PVC pipe to replace lead service lines.”
