The vinyl siding on your home could be poisoning you and your loved ones. Introduced to consumers market in the early 1960s, it didn’t gain much attention as a home remodeling product until the 1970s. In 1992, 20 manufacturers of vinyl siding produced 1 billion pounds of vinyl siding. By 1992 there was 2.2 million square feet of vinyl siding in use. The vinyl siding industry is the largest user of the PVC resin that was first produced in the laboratory in 1872. It’s the PVC component that is causing the problem. “The Center for Health, Environment and Justice, a non-profit organization based in New York, calls polyvinyl chloride ‘one of the most hazardous consumer products ever created (Clark, 2007).’” PVC (Poly Vinyl Chloride) is one of the hazardous chemical ever produced and it’s used everywhere. Most vinyl sidings also contain lead which is added to the plasticizer to make the siding more rigid, So if PVC is one of the most deadly chemical ever used in consumer products, does that mean that the vinyl siding on your home is killing you and your loved ones? But it’s not just the vinyl siding on your homes that contain PVC, PVC is used in everything from children’s toys to artificial Christmas trees, there’s no escaping it.
Studies have shown that all the stabilizers added to vinyl siding don’t chemically bond with all the other molecule present in vinyl siding which allows some of the lead that was added to make the siding rigid leach out and settle on the surface of the siding. As a rule, vinyl siding is safe as long as you don’t spend a lot of time touching it or licking it. A far great danger occurs during a house fire. When vinyl siding or other plastics containing PVC burns a very dark, acrid smoke is generated. This acrid smoke contains hydrogen chloride which, upon entering the lungs, becomes hydrochloric acid, one of the most caustic acids known to man. Hydrochloric acids cause severe chemical burns to the lung’s delicate tissue. These chemical burns are so severe that the victim usually dies from them before the flames and/or carbon monoxide can kill them. Can you avoid Hydrogen Chloride carrying smoke during a house fire? Not likely because almost every piece of plastic in our homes contain PVC. Our children’s toys contain PVC. The shower curtains in our bathrooms contain PVC. Now, if that’s not scary enough, our children can be poisoned simply by chewing on the plastic toys containing PVCs.
References
Clark, J. (2007, November 16). Is Your Vinyl Siding Killing You? Retrieved February 2, 2009, from How Stuff Works: http://home.howstuffworks.com/vinyl-siding-lethal1.htm
