More and more as time goes by, it’s clear to see the writing on the vinyl-sided wall: There is no future for PVC. It may be everywhere right now, and its grasp in nearly every industry may seem as tenacious as the shrink wrap currently ensnaring millions of copies of Green Day’s 21st Century Breakdown; however, as the body count grows and the cancers spread, the evidence becomes increasingly difficult for PVC makers to deny. Why, it was just last December that CBS News reported on a tiny Illinois town, population 1,000, in which 14 residents developed brain cancer—three on the same block, next door to each other, while the national incidence of their cancer is more like seven out of 100,000. Dr. Phil Lewis, Chief of Medicine for the Dow Chemical subsidiary Rohm & Haas whose chemical factory, one mile from the town, admits to having buried toxic waste on its property for 20 years ending in 1979, told CBS, “First thing, it is important to understand that that could be a coincidence.” Who’d a-thunk Dr. Phil would come up with such an easy explanation? And that wasn’t even about the 14 dying townies, either. That was in response to the 12 additional brain cancer victims within Rohm & Haas’ own research-and-development headquarters in Philadelphia.

Polyvinyl chloride (aka PVC, or “vinyl,” as we music lovers call it) is the clear and certain champion of exactly what’s terrible about modern manufacturing, particularly within the music industry, though it’s rarely discussed. Polyvinyl chloride is what vinyl records are made out of, ye olde gold standard for the traditionalist, audiophile, and hipster alike. It’s also the plastic out of which we make CD jewel cases, shrink wrap, the outer shells of most laptops and mp3 players, and a million other things. It cannot be created or broken down without releasing dioxin, which is literally the most toxic poison known to humanity. In the first part of this series, Crawdaddy! examined the ills of PVC, weighed its impact via records vs. CDs, and how independent record labels feel about these primary offenders. Yet whenever the question of hope for a safer alternative was raised, the answer was all but foregone: Mp3 is the “greenest” way to go. However, as any vinyl devotee is quick to point out, there are plenty of physical ramifications to all that supports the cold, virtual world, as well; ramifications worse than laptop wrist, over-caffeination, and getting suspended for sexting, combined.

In 2008, iTunes proclaimed five billion songs had been downloaded from its website to date, and eMusic claimed 250 million. Assuming an average length of 10 to 12 songs per album, that’s the loose equivalent of around 480 million CDs or LPs rendered unnecessary. It’s hard to argue with that kind of environmental savings—but not impossible. After all, some of those albums could otherwise have been purchased used, thereby kept out of landfills. Moreover, mp3s are like the flattened, compressed, digitized sounds of trees falling in the woods; without a player to play them, they barely exist, and these players don’t exactly grow on trees either (though there’s plenty of deforestation in order to mine for the stuff inside them). As mentioned above, laptops, mp3 players, cords, and chargers are also typically encased in polyvinyl chloride, along with a veritable cornucopia of other monstrous toxins, any one of which can kill: Mercury, lead, cadmium, phthalates, arsenic, brominated flame retardants (BFRs), you name it.

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