Vinyl industry fights EPA plan to access unpublished VCM studies

The vinyl industry and others could be required to turn over unpublished or internal health and safety studies of vinyl chloride monomer to the Environmental Protection Agency, under a new proposal from the federal government.

The EPA proposal, issued in March, is designed to complement a bigger agency decision in December 2023 that added VCM and four other compounds to a priority list of legacy chemicals to undergo detailed safety reviews.

The proposal aims to give EPA staff additional data to do that work.

The Vinyl Institute, in written comments delivered to EPA prior to a May 28 deadline for feedback, pushed back strongly on the agency's proposal, while environmental groups and labor unions supported it.

The EPA proposal is broader than just VCM. It also seeks unpublished studies and information on 15 other chemicals, including other plastic feedstocks such as styrene, benzene, naphthalene and bisphenol-A, that EPA said could undergo similar safety reviews in coming years.

But the environmental groups focused their comments on vinyl chloride and said the EPA proposal could have a big impact on the data available to scientists in the VCM review.

They noted public concern stemming from the VCM spill and burn-off last year following a February 2023 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

Those groups, including EarthJustice and Beyond Plastics, want EPA to expand the proposal to require reporting from PVC makers and downstream distributors of the chemical, not just the direct manufacturers.

But the Vinyl Institute urged EPA to scrap the proposal entirely.

The Washington-based trade group said vinyl chloride is already a "data-rich" substance and said the government hasn't shown why it needs the extra information.

VI also argued that unpublished research can be of poor quality or incomplete and said unpublished studies useful to EPA are likely to be "few and far between."

"EPA should be careful in its use of unpublished studies," VI said. "Studies remain unpublished for many reasons, many of which relate to information quality. Unpublished works could be so because they are of such poor quality that the study was rejected by reputable peer reviewers."

It characterized the EPA proposal as part of a trend toward lowering the quality of information the agency uses.

"The apparent 'lowering of the bar' to allow gray literature and unpublished studies to take a prominent role in EPA decision making is a disturbing trend," VI said.

VI said EPA needs more clarity on what is an "unpublished" study, and it said that if the EPA moves ahead with the rule, it should limit what the information seeks, such as clarifying that raw monitoring data or studies on polymers do not have be submitted.

VI also said that studies in public, international databases like those for the European Union's REACH program, should not have to be submitted and asked for clarity on research possessed by a foreign affiliate of a U.S. company.

Environmental groups argued EPA should expand disclosure requirements, pointing to previous industry attempts to withhold information and to public concern about last year's East Palestine train derailment.

They urged EPA to cast a wide net in the types of companies it requires disclosure from, including PVC plants and distributors. They said, for example, that the U.S.'s biggest VCM emitter is a Westlake PVC plant in Calvert City, Ky.

"Entities involved in these conditions of use are responsible for a significant volume of vinyl chloride releases into the environment, and therefore significant harm," they said. "Since these entities are known to contribute to the unreasonable risk posed by vinyl chloride, it is highly likely that they have conducted health and safety studies, or at least know of such studies."

The 18 environmental groups in the coalition, which includes Beyond Petrochemicals, Rise St. James, San Antonio Bay Waterkeeper, the Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists, said EPA has more authority to require disclosure under the Toxic Substances Control Act than it's seeking in the proposal.

The groups also said that within the 1976 legislative history for the creation of TSCA, Congress inserted language that called attention to Senate hearings with "detailed allegations that certain groups within the chemical industry had knowledge of the cancer-causing potential of vinyl chloride well in advance of the time that this information was released to the government or the public."

"It would be a painful irony if nearly 50 years after TSCA's adoption, EPA deliberately chose not to fully utilize its authority to obtain information about the health and environmental effects of vinyl chloride, especially in light of the recent East Palestine vinyl chloride train derailment and fire," the groups said.