Preventing Harm from Polyvinyl Chloride

Polyvinyl chloride, also known as PVC or vinyl, is a compound present throughout the environment, including everyday household products such as baby bottles. It is disproportionately present in communities of color. Yet it is complicit in such harms as various cancers, respiratory disorders, and fetal/newborn disabilities.**

The Center for Health and Environmental Justice runs a campaign against PVC.

PVC (polyvinyl chloride) products are everywhere and are dangerous to our health and environment from start to finish - in the factory, at home, and in the trash... The good news is that safe, cost-effective, alternatives to PVC are readily available and responsible companies are phasing it out.

The fight is by no means over, despite these most welcome developments. Please visit the campaign's site to find out how you can support socially responsible companies by purchasing alternative, safe products--and how you can challenge the firms still guilty of monumental disrespect for life.



**Why did I say "fetal and newborn disabilities" instead of the more common "birth defects"?

A disability rights consciousness calls this term into question, because it implies that people with disabilities are "defective" as human beings.

(Just as a feminist and/or prolife consciousness calls into question the term "illegitimate children"--because how can human beings be somehow invalid?)

In fact, the branch of medicine that studies disabilities in the earliest stages of human life is still called "teratology"--literally the study of monsters. A characterization that I and (I'd venture to assume) most people with disabilities find objectionable.