PVC and its controversies

• Autores: Maria Elvira Callapez, Ernst Homburg
• Localización: The Circulation of Science and Technology: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science. Barcelona, 18-20 November 2010 / coord. por Antoni M. Roca Rosell, 2012, ISBN 978-84-9965-108-8, págs. 1166-1170
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a polymer, is one of the most known and used plastics in the world. This plastic has worldwide applications in sectors such as construction, consumer goods and food packaging. In spite of usefulness of this material, in the early 1970s, complaints surfaced regarding potential links between a kind of liver cancer and vinyl chloride monomer (VCM), a small chemical unit that is used in synthesizing PVC.

    This paper firstly analyses the health-history of VCM and PVC, and the outbreak of first the ‘hand-disease’ (acroosteloysis) and then liver cancer (angiosarcoma); and secondly how chemists, the industry, the governments, the press, and public in general reacted to this event. We will analyse in a comparative manner the (different) responses in the USA and in Europe.