Updated April 2023: This report uncovers how the chemical industry hid what it knew about the toxicity of vinyl chloride as far back as the 1950s.
It comes from the Environmental Working Group’s Chemical Industry Archives, a database first published in 2001. Although this report was last updated in 2009, the shocking revelations it details remain relevant today, given that we are still dealing with the toxic fallout of using vinyl chloride.
The ongoing health risks from exposure to vinyl chloride were made abundantly clear by the March 2023 derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, of a Norfolk Southern train carrying the chemical.
About EWG’s Chemical Industry Archives
EWG assembled the Chemical Industry Archives from thousands of internal documents, spanning over 50 years, from chemical makers and their trade associations, including the powerful industry lobby the Chemical Manufacturers Association (since renamed to the American Chemistry Council).
The memos, letters, reports and meeting minutes were obtained through lawsuits brought by citizens alleging that they or their family members were harmed by the products of chemical companies. The documents chronicle numerous instances in which the industry knew about chemical hazards and exposures but did not disclose them to the public or federal regulators.
The Chemical Industry Archives demonstrates the danger of relying on the chemical industry to disclose accurate science about the risks posed to the public and workers by their products and practices. Our trove of documents also highlights the folly in expecting chemical companies to willingly submit to reasonable regulation to adequately protect public health.
One major component of the cache is about 10,000 pages from different companies involved in the production of vinyl chloride, including Monsanto, B.F. Goodrich, and Union Carbide.
Another large portion of the archives comprises over 25,000 pages of documents, dating back to the early 1940s, of minutes from the Chemical Manufacturers Association. It includes minutes from the trade group's meetings and the Board of Directors and Executive Committee meetings up to the early 1990s, as well as documents from many of the trade group's committees, from Occupational Health and Safety to Government Relations.
The Chemical Industry Archives also highlights the huge amounts the industry spent over decades on greenwashing propaganda. This money was spent trying to influence the news media, the public and federal officials that toxic chemicals were safe, through advertisements, public relations campaigns and polling. The industry promoted scientist spokespeople and even produced its own TV and radio content that it distributed for free to local broadcasters.
Why the Chemical Industry Archives still matters
The Chemical Industry Archives proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that chemical manufacturers and their trade associations knew all too well, for many years, that some of their products pose serious risks to human health – and even worse, that they expended enormous effort and money to hide those dangers from workers and the public.
Nearly 20 years after EWG first published the Chemical Industry Archives, we stand even firmer in our belief that companies must assess chemicals for safety before they are manufactured, sold and widely used. We are more steadfast in our commitment to compel chemical companies to clean up their act, and to push the Environmental Protection Agency to hold them accountable.
Companies must also share all information about chemical exposure and hazard potential, including early-life and biomonitoring studies, with the EPA – not just evidence of significant risks. And companies must immediately report to the EPA when they obtain information showing such risks.
The Biden EPA has made significant progress in tackling chemical contamination, particularly with its recently announced plan to establish legal limits for several of the most notorious PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” in drinking water. But it is imperative the agency use its authority to hold chemical companies accountable so the insidious past practices like those of the vinyl chloride industry do not happen again in the future.
"We feel quite confident, however, that 500 ppm (vinyl chloride) is going to produce rather appreciable injury when inhaled 7 hours a day, five days a week for an extended period."
- Dow scientist writing to the Director of Industrial Hygiene and Toxicology, B. F. Goodrich Company, May 1959 (view entire document)
"With little persuasion, he changed the VDC reports first sentence from "Experiments on another chemical, vinyldene chloride monomer, show that it is strongly carcinogenic...' to 'Preliminary experiments on another chemical vinyldene chloride monomer, indicate that it may have carcinogenic activity in experiments similar to those described above..."
- Chemical Manufacturers Association, Trip Report, October 1974 (view entire document)
"It was the consensus of those present that ... it would be appropriate to release such information [about the research project] to the press. There will be no reference to the European studies and the nature of the project is to be referred to as a chronic inhalation study without reference to the question of carcinogenesis."
- Chemical Manufacturers Association, Vinyl Research Coordinators, January 1973 (view entire document)
The story of vinyl chloride is a tale of corporate deception in which chemical industry executives kept workers and government health officials in the dark about the debilitating and sometimes fatal consequences of working with the chemical. As evidence emerged over a 20 year period that vinyl chloride caused signature injuries such as disintegration of the bones in the fingers and then fatal liver cancer, and perhaps other cancers, the chemical industry engaged in an increasingly complex and coordinated plot to keep anyone from knowing the chemical's true hazards. There were virtually no limits to the deception.
Over a 15-year period: workers were exposed to levels of vinyl chloride that were known to cause injury and not told; scientists were pressured to rewrite publications; manufacturers and beauticians were kept in the dark about vinyl chloride in hair spray and the potential devastating risks; information was withheld from government health officials; health exams were given under false pretense to keep workers in the dark about what was happening to them; studies were terminated to avoid producing damaging evidence; and pacts of silence were agreed to and executed.
Today, thirty years after the industry first learned that vinyl chloride caused cancer, workers are still dying, and many people -including an untold number of beauty shop workers in the 1960s and 1970s- remain unaware that they were heavily exposed for years to a highly hazardous, potentially deadly substance.
From 1953 to 1972, the Manufacturing Chemists Association Chemical Safety Data Sheet for vinyl chloride recommended 500 parts per million (ppm) as an acceptable average exposure level over the course of a workday. Yet by 1959, industry scientists had compelling evidence that this level of exposure was not safe, and that vinyl chloride was injuring workers at levels well below the 500 ppm daily average. One scientist was unusually candid in his assessment of the risk:
Industry sponsored animal tests at that time detected "liver injury" after inhalation of vinyl chloride for just six months at 100 ppm, 5 times less than the acceptable daily level for workers. (view entire document) After conversations with Dow scientists who were not able to find a dose of vinyl chloride in animals that did not cause harm, a Union Carbide memo reported that "vinyl chloride monomer is more toxic than has been believed." (view entire document)
But the industry did not respond. Even after Dow researchers published a paper in 1961 reporting that vinyl chloride was toxic at levels well below 500 ppm, companies did nothing to warn workers that vinyl chloride was hazardous, or to lower allowable exposure levels below 500 ppm. Dow apparently adopted a 50 ppm standard in 1961. At the time there were no legally enforceable workplace chemical exposure limits.
By the mid-1960s the first waves of injured workers were appearing. There were reports of acroosteolysis (AOL), referred to in industry documents as "the hand disease," an insidious and debilitating condition that, in the most extreme cases, was manifested by degeneration of the bones in the tips of the fingers. Workers' finger bones were dissolving, but rather than opening an investigation of the issue, the industry opted for evasive medical exams, and a gag on all dissemination to workers of information relevant to the situation.
A 1964 internal memo from B.F. Goodrich is instructive:
Continuing on, the memo states:
As evidence of the disintegrating hand problem mounted throughout the 1960s in Europe and the United States, the industry attempted to directly influence the science. A 1966 internal Monsanto memo recounts B. F. Goodrich's reaction to the mere possibility of a publication describing the diseases in the peer-reviewed literature:
That particular intervention was unsuccessful, but not to be deterred, the Monsanto memo further reports that:
A 1967 article by B.F. Goodrich scientists in the Journal of the American Medical Association finally did report the "basic characteristics of this disease." But in line with the overall strategy of downplaying the significance of the findings in relation to vinyl chloride, the authors state that: "The specific causes are unknown" (view entire document) and that the condition is not particularly serious: "We have observed no serious disability in any of these cases." (view entire document)
But the industry knew otherwise. A November 1964 internal Goodrich memo notes that the company has observed "bone resorption" in the tips of the fingers of it workers, and that "In some cases this is quite marked." A January 1966 memo from Monsanto recounts a conversation with a B.F. Goodrich Corporate Vice President who reported that AOL was occurring in workers not directly involved in cleaning the vinyl chloride polymerization reactors, or so called "kettles":
In June 1968, B. F. Goodrich was still guarding information on scores of cases of the disease at its vinyl chloride and polyvinyl chloride facilities as "confidential" and "not to be disseminated." (view entire document) A Goodrich memo at the time reports 49 cases and then goes on to say:
Widespread AOL across the industry was a powerful indication that vinyl chloride was far more toxic than previously believed, and affected workers through systemic action. But the industry ignored the warning signs. On November 24, 1969, the MCA Plastics Committee resolved that it would not accept further proposals for additional research into the causes of acroosteolysis. (view entire document)
Shutting down investigations, however, could not stop the inevitable progress of the disease among vinyl chloride workers. "The hand disease" was a warning of much worse afflictions to come.
In May 1970, Dr. P. L. Viola of the Regina Elena Institute for Cancer Research in Rome, Italy reported at an international cancer research conference in Houston, Texas, that vinyl chloride caused cancer in laboratory animals at 30,000 parts per million. Dr. Viola's work was sponsored by Solvay Chemical. (view entire document) This finding was extremely significant and elevated the hazards of vinyl chloride from an issue concerning "hand problems" in workers at a relative handful of companies, to a life-threatening issue affecting the entire chemical industry. The implications were enormous: if vinyl chloride were found to cause cancer, the entire chemical industry would surely be subject to controls at its factories. Even more potentially devastating, if the cancer finding proved true, the industry was potentially liable for vinyl chloride exposure from a broad range of consumer products.
In response, the industry dug in even further, and intensified the pattern of deception and delay it had developed with the hand disease problem.
The chemical industry heavily promoted vinyl chloride as a propellant in aerosol cans throughout the late 1950s and 1960s. Yet as early as 1964, Aerosol Age, a trade magazine, reported that vinyl chloride in the air could reach very high levels in beauty parlors where hair spray was used- levels that would later be judged by vinyl chloride makers themselves to exceed the dose found to cause cancer in chemical plant workers. (view entire document) By 1969, B.F. Goodrich reported in an internal industry memo that: "People in the cosmetics trade have [become] concerned about the possible toxicity of these propellants." (view entire document)
With good reason. By that time vinyl chloride producers knew that beauticians could easily get a huge dose of vinyl in the course of an average workday. The 1969 B.F. Goodrich memo, after reviewing the evidence, concludes: "Beauty operators may be exposed to concentrations of [VCM] equal to or greater than the level" for chemical plant employees. (view entire document)
By 1971 the industry knew without doubt that vinyl chloride caused cancer in animals. (view entire document) A year later, the company acknowledged internally that beauty operators could be at greater cancer risk than chemical workers. (view entire document) In 1973 the predecessor of the Chemical Manufacturers Association was still advising VCM manufacturers to publicly make "no reference . . . to the question of carcinogensis." (view entire document)
On Jan. 30, 1973, the Manufacturing Chemists Association's vinyl chloride research team, with representatives from Dow, PPG, B.F. Goodrich, Ethyl Corporation, Union Carbide, and other major companies present, met to discuss what position the MCA should convey to its member companies regarding the continued use of vinyl chloride as an aerosol propellant. Their primary concern was to avoid "undue and premature attention on the industrial hygiene aspects of the problem," and they dealt with it by taking no position. (view entire document)
Not only was the MCA avoiding public discussion of VCM use in aerosols, they were also avoiding disclosure of the emerging evidence that VCM causes cancer. At that same meeting in January 1973, they discussed a proposed industry-sponsored VCM research project to be carried out by Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories:
In the months following the meeting, internal memos from various chemical companies in attendance provide additional details of the discussion. Again and again, the chemical makers returned to a comparison of liability vs. profitability. This issue was clear: how to protect the larger vinyl market from the potential enormous liability presented by the use of vinyl chloride in consumer aerosols.
How could vinyl producers get out of the VCM business without raising suspicion about its safety?
A 1973 document paper from Allied Chemical clarifies the range of options for the industry. (view entire document) Industry apparently choose option c, "Orderly withdrawal from market, without explanation" In the end, companies simply stopped selling VCM as an aerosol propellant, informing their clients by making "personal visits to substantial fillers" to discreetly advise them that they were cutting them off. (view entire document)
Vinyl chloride factory workers were not so lucky. There was no quiet phase-out of vinyl chloride at the plants where thousands of workers labored. There were not even any efforts to reduce exposure. Instead, industry threw its considerable resources into suppressing the flow of information on the hazards of vinyl chloride. It would not act until forced to do so.
By 1972 the industry had in place an industry-wide secrecy agreement concerning the cancer causing properties of VCM. (view entire document) The Manufacturing Chemists Association orchestrated this industry-wide non-disclosure pact, soliciting ironclad pledges of secrecy from some 25 vinyl producers and users in the Unites States and Europe. (view entire document) According to a 1972 MCA memo, companies "should feel honor bound to make sure such information remains within their own companies." (view entire document) These non-disclosures were open-ended, and could only be breached by affirmative consent of the supplier of the information, namely the European companies that had contracted for the studies. (view entire document)
By November 1972, the industry had additional study results from an independent Italian researcher, Dr. Cesare Maltoni, showing that vinyl chloride caused a rare form of liver cancer in laboratory animals at doses as low as 250 part per million after just one year of exposure (4 hours a day, five days a week). (view entire document) This potentially was very damaging information. Workers had been exposed to vinyl chloride at levels twice as high as this, or greater, for years, even decades. The risks to these workers were potentially fatal, and the industry now knew it.
But for the industry, the oath of secrecy was paramount. It even superceded their moral obligation to inform government regulators about the risks they were now virtually certain their workers faced. When MCA officials met with leaders of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in July 1973, they failed to disclose the Maltoni information to the agency. Industry disputes this fact, but testifying before the U.S. Senate in August 1974, the Director of NIOSH, Dr. Marcus Key, put it this way:
"No mention was ever made to us about liver cancer and the new Italian investigator was not named. I would like to re-emphasize that no information about liver cancers was given. If there had been, I think we would have taken an entirely different course of action in view of the widespread use of this material."
In January 1974, B.F. Goodrich announced the presence of a rare liver cancer, angiosarcoma, in its polyvinyl chloride workers at is Louisville plant. The industry purported to be shocked at the news that vinyl chloride could cause cancer, and portrayed the very rare and fatal cancers as isolated to one facility. Workers, regulators and the public were not told that two years earlier, the industry's top medical experts had evidence (which they believed was compelling) documenting these same tumors in animals exposed to doses of vinyl chloride far lower than levels commonly found in the workplace.
The strategy quickly became one of limiting liability by controlling the science, either through pressuring scientists directly, or by manipulating the study design of the only study of vinyl chloride industry workers.
In October 1974, European scientists (Viola) had more compelling evidence that vinyl chloride was "strongly carcinogenic" in animals, and had prepared a report for publication. Following on the heels of the B.F. Goodrich fatal angiosarcomas in workers, a confirmatory finding of strong carcinogenicity would be a severe blow to the industry.
Still bound by their secrecy agreement with the European producers, American vinyl producers crossed the Atlantic with the expressed purpose of diluting the publication of these pivotal study results. This pressure was successful. After a visit from a representative from the MCA, the study author, Dr. P. L. Viola, changed the all-important first sentence of his report to dramatically downplay the seriousness of his findings:
In May of 1974, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) proposed a maximum exposure level for vinyl chloride at a no detectable level, using equipment with an accuracy of 1 part per million.
Industry strenuously opposed this standard. A May 24, 1974 special meeting of the Vinyl Chloride Safety Association was attended by 55 people representing 27 companies. Many claimed that protecting workers from vinyl chloride would put them out of business. A Union Carbide memo describing the meeting reports that companies still felt the proposed standard was "not necessary" and that they could not "take risk of an industry shutdown." (view entire document)
But the industry did not shut down. Instead, the no detectable level and 1 part per million standard was implemented on January 1, 1975 and after decades of heavy exposure to vinyl chloride worker risks were dramatically reduced.