Industry

Companies in the U.S. began limited VCM manufacturing in the 1920s. Commercial production of VCM began in the 1930s. Throughout the sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties, the VCM and PVC industry enjoyed immense growth and prosperity.

VCM is manufactured by the relatively simple process of heating ethylene dichloride (EDC) to around 700°F in the presence of oxygen. VCM is manufactured in a relatively small number of plants that are almost entirely located along the gulf coast in Texas and Louisiana. VCM is used almost exclusively in the manufacture of various types of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) resins at PVC resin plants located across the United States, but again, primarily in Texas and Louisiana using, again, a relatively simple manufacturing process called polymerization.

VCM is charged to large polymerization reactors that are often referred to as "polys" or PVC "kettles." Since the polymerization process never consumes all of the available VCM, varying amounts of VCM remain trapped in every form of PVC resin and in every finished product fabricated from PVC resins. As a result, this residual vinyl chloride monomer (RVCM) is present in varying quantities in all raw PVC resin and in all finished PVC products until it is liberated into the atmosphere by "off-gassing" or migrates into food, drink, or other substances stored in containers made of PVC as well as various types of food wraps, etc. The potential adverse health effects associated with consumer product exposures are predictable but, because of the relatively low levels involved and the ubiquity of such exposures, difficult or impossible to demonstrate empirically in human beings. However, given animal studies and biological considerations, RVCM almost certainly poses a significant risk to human beings even at exceedingly low levels, notwithstanding industry propaganda to the contrary. However, the potential health risks posed by PVC products is not at all limited even to the millions of workers involved in fabricating PVC products but extends to everyone who is exposed to vinyl products, meaning virtually everyone.

From the PVC plant, raw PVC resin is bagged and shipped to a large number, perhaps hundreds, of compounding facilities where the raw PVC resin is compounded with other chemicals. Most resin, however, is shipped by rail and tank truck to thousands of PVC fabrication plants where fabrication workers melt or mold the PVC resin and process it to make consumer goods. In the course of product fabrication, millions of American workers are occupationally exposed to significant levels of vinyl chloride, although the vinyl industry would have us believe that only those workers directly involved in the manufacture of VCM or PVC resin are at risk for occupational diseases caused by vinyl chloride exposure.  Even the limited studies that have been conducted demonstrate a clear occupational health hazard for these "downstream" vinyl workers involved in melting, molding, extruding, and calendaring PVC into "thousands of useful finished PVC products."