Debate on regulating PVC waste heats up

The Environmental Protection Agency's tentative decision in mid-January not to regulate PVC as a hazardous substance has prompted a spirited back-and-forth over whether it was the right move.

Many vinyl and construction groups weighed in the week of Feb. 13, telling EPA in formal comments to stick to its decision and said the widespread use and disposal of PVC is safe.

Environmental and health groups, for their part, urged EPA to reverse course and took to social media to say the massive Feb. 3 train accident in Ohio involving railcar loads of vinyl chloride monomer adds to their case.

Industry groups said labeling PVC products broadly as hazardous waste under federal law — as environmentalists first petitioned EPA to do in 2014 — would raise costs across the economy and put the brakes on developing PVC recycling technology.

"Granting the petition would regulate as hazardous a material that has a record of safe use over decades [and] would cause significant disruptions to our industry, the U.S. economy, and recycling innovation," wrote Joshua Baca, vice president of the plastics division at the American Chemistry Council in Washington.

Building industry groups weighed in as well. The National Utility Contractors Association mounted a mass email campaign, according to EPA records, with its members arguing that designating PVC pipe as hazardous could slow efforts to replace lead water pipe service lines.

But environmental groups made their own push.

The Center for Biological Diversity, which filed the initial petition to EPA in 2014, presented 4,500 emails from the public saying the agency should change its mind and declare PVC hazardous waste under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

And it gave EPA scientists 24 newer studies it said document problems like acute toxicity of leachate from the 7 billion pounds of PVC products discarded in the U.S. each year.

"The agency must, at a minimum, revise its solid waste management guidelines to reduce the significant threats to human health and the environment arising from the improper disposal of this plastic trash," CBD and 25 other groups, including the Plastic Pollution Coalition and Greenpeace USA, wrote to EPA.

Befitting a technical rulemaking like this, industry groups presented their own scientific assessments.

The Washington-based Vinyl Institute gave EPA a 123-page analysis of studies and said research presented by CBD doesn't support broadly declaring all PVC products a RCRA hazard when they're disposed of.

"Many of the studies CBD references focus on the hazards presented by direct phthalate exposure, as opposed to potential exposure or effects from discarded PVC," wrote VI President and CEO Ned Monroe.

On Feb. 13, the EPA closed the public comments period on its preliminary decision.

The case has had a tangled history, with CBD suing the agency in 2021 alleging unreasonable delays in deciding its petition, with the parties resolving the case last year after EPA agreed to quickly consider the 2014 petition.

When it tentatively denied the CBD petition in January, EPA said the environmental group did not present enough evidence that PVC is hazardous and it argued it has "higher priority for limited available resources" for its staff than a new rulemaking on vinyl.

"The petition does not present evidence that discarded PVC presents a substantial present or potential hazard to human health or the environment when solid waste is improperly treated, stored, transported or disposed of, or otherwise managed," wrote Barry Breen, EPA's acting assistant administrator in the Office of Land and Emergency Management, in agency's preliminary decision.

EPA said its funding for developing new regulations under RCRA has been "flat or reduced for more than 20 years."

Breen said agency's last hazardous product listing, for paint in 2002, took the equivalent of two staffers working five years.

But CBD and its partner environmental groups, in urging EPA to reconsider its tentative decision, said PVC releases dioxins and phthalates into the air, water and food chain, and said regulatory agencies have historically done little to address those risks.

On social media, CBD pointed to the hazards created by train car loads of vinyl chloride monomer that burned after a Feb. 3 derailment in Ohio, and said it strengthens the need for a hazardous designation.

The environmental groups said in their filing that exposure to PVC and its additives, including toxins like lead and cadmium, can cause reproductive damage, hormone problems, changes in brain development, obesity, insulin resistance and organ damage.

"Despite PVC's well documented harms to human health and marine ecosystems, policymakers have implemented few practical measures to address this problem," they wrote. "To preserve the marine environment and protect human health, we urge EPA to promptly exercise its authority to ensure the safe disposal of discarded PVC and the protective management of associated chemical substances, including vinyl chloride and phthalate plasticizers."

The Michigan Chemistry Council told EPA that listing PVC as a RCRA hazardous substance would undermine recycling because it put "dramatic regulatory burdens" on companies handing vinyl waste.

"Many parties would likely avoid accepting any PVC materials for repurposing, recycling or recovery due to the RCRA compliance obligations," said MCC Executive Director John Dulmes.

A hazardous waste listing would also hurt research to develop chemical recycling technologies to process waste vinyl, MCC said.

"This research builds upon other longstanding efforts to improve the recyclability of PVC, which will be key as PVC is increasingly deployed in clean energy applications like wind and solar farms," Dulmes wrote. "Unfortunately, a RCRA listing would significantly hamper such efforts."

As well, the Healthcare Waste Institute, which is part of the National Waste & Recycling Association, said a RCRA designation would mean that vinyl medical products like blood bags, catheters and tubing would face expensive dual regulation as both medical and hazardous waste.

"Hospitals and other health care facilities that generate these wastes would be burdened with having to manage new waste streams as hazardous waste and costs to do so would increase significantly," HWI said.

The Resilient Floor Covering Institute, which represents makers of vinyl flooring, said EPA correctly rejected the CBD petition for not showing that any of three potential exposure pathways — marine litter, leaching from poorly lined landfills and waste incineration — would be addressed through a RCRA listing.

The Flexible Vinyl Alliance, an industry umbrella group that formed to advocate against PVC de-selection, urged EPA to also consider a May 2022 decision by the Food and Drug Administration, which did not find any health problems from dietary exposure to certain phthalates.

FVA Executive Director Kevin Ott said the FDA decision was in line with conclusions reached by food safety agencies for the European Union, Australia, the United Kingdom and Ireland.

"We hope that the irony of attempting to list PVC as hazardous waste, considering the recent FDA decision which re-affirms the safety of several essential PVC phthalate plasticizers in food contact, is also deemed relevant to the final and permanent denial of the 2014 CBD petition," Ott said.