Phthalates are used as plasticizers to soften polyvinyl chloride plastic, also known as PVC or vinyl, including a wide range of building products such as vinyl flooring, wallcovering and upholstery.

Phthalate plasticizers are not chemically bound to PVC. They have been found to leach, migrate or evaporate into indoor air and atmosphere, foodstuff, IV solutions and other materials, etc. Consumer products containing phthalates can result in human exposure through direct contact and use, indirectly through leaching into other products, or general environmental contamination. Humans are exposed through ingestion, inhalation, and dermal exposure during their whole lifetime, starting in the womb. Phthalates come in many different formulas. Most haven’t been tested or examined at all for human health impacts. The Consumer Product Safety Commission has noted that one phthalate formula common to certain building materials — DINP [1] — is a mixture of up to 100 chemical variants, of which only five have been minimally studied [2]. Others have been found to pose a risk of serious negative health impacts at very low doses.

Phthalates have been shown to have negative effects on human health including interference with the natural functioning of the hormone system, and reproductive and genital defects. Phthalates may lower sperm count and are associated with the risk factors for testicular cancer, as well as early onset of puberty and premature birth.

In June 2005, HBN discussed recent research findings that the cumulative impact of different phthalates leads to an exponential increase in associated harm, and documented levels of phthalates found in humans at levels higher than levels shown to cause adverse health effects. A 2007 study concluded that the exposure of children to phthalates exceeds that in adults, warning, “Current human biomonitoring data prove that the tolerable intake of children is exceeded to a considerable degree, in some instances up to 20-fold” [3].

Phthalates have been found in high quantities in studies of household dust. Other studies have documented links between childhood asthma and phthalate exposure from vinyl flooring. Because phthalates are not a volatile organic compound (VOC), however, they are usually not accounted for by indoor air quality standards such as those used to certify green building materials.

The CSB Investigation Report is made all the more relevant to green building professionals in light of the USGBC’s finding that PVC flooring ranked absolute worst in both human health and environmental factors compared to the alternatives reviewed. The destroyed factory, owned by Formosa Plastics, had been a major supplier of vinyl resin for Armstrong floors.

The CSB is the industrial equivalent of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the agency that rushes investigators to the scene of plane crashes, train derailments and the like. [1] The CSB’s March 6, 2007 report found among other things that the cause of this accident, “inadvertently draining a reactor, is a serious hazard in the PVC manufacturing process.” [2] Indeed just 60 days before the fatal explosion, workers at the same facility accidentally released an undisclosed amount of vinyl chloride. The report also notes that 8,000 pounds of vinyl chloride were released by accident in June 2003 at the company’s Baton Rouge, LA facility. [3] A year after the explosion, in May 2005, another 2,500 pounds of vinyl chloride were accidentally released from the company’s Delaware City, DE location. [4] Each release was caused by the same problems which led to the catastrophe at the Illiopolis facility in April 2004. Other PVC factories owned by Formosa have also suffered catastrophic explosions in the recent past. [5]

One morning ten years ago, I was at work on a book about environmental health when the phone rang. It was my Uncle Roy. He wanted me to know that a developer had come to town peddling a plan to construct a giant waste incinerator in the cornfield next to his own. What the man was planning to burn in it, he said, was old auto interiors, including a lot of PVC plastic. If the people of the township went along, the company would build the school a new library.

Now how did they know we needed a library, my uncle wondered. And what did I know about a chemical called dioxin? Funny he should ask. I was just drafting that chapter.

So I took leave of the Harvard Medical School Library and went back home to library-less central Illinois to throw my hat in the ring with my mother’s brother and a group of other farmers who had vowed to fight the incinerator.

And we won. Not only did Forrest, Illinois vote down the incinerator plan, it was defeated in six other small, impoverished farming communities where the same developer had dangled it. People looked out at their turkeys, hogs, and fields of corn and imagined what could happen if one semi-truck full of dioxin-laden incinerator ash overturned on a windy day. It just wasn’t worth the risk, they decided.

A decade later, central Illinoisians are confronted with a similar choice. This time it involves the manufacture of PVC rather than its destruction.