For Immediate Release
Contact: Allen Blakey
703-741-5666 (office)
571-224-4547 (cell)

ARLINGTON, Va., May 16, 2005 – A new DVD of Blue Vinyl, a movie about a woman’s effort to get her parents to remove newly installed vinyl siding from their home, tells a different story than the version released in 2002 and broadcast on HBO. Missing is a key character – Lori Sanzone, who in the TV version claimed she contracted a rare cancer from working in a PVC pipe factory.

Sanzone was the star witness in support of Blue Vinyl’s claim that companies that make products like siding and pipe out of vinyl “resin” (the polymer or basic plastic) are at risk of contracting angiosarcoma of the liver (ASL). A lawsuit she filed in the Superior Court of Delaware charging conspiracy against dozens of companies led to a feature role for her in the movie.

The problem was she did not have ASL, and she only worked in the pipe plant for seven days. All this came out when Sanzone’s lawsuit was dismissed in January 2004. The court indicated it found no basis for the charges.

Another misleading episode still in Blue Vinyl concerns a class-action lawsuit against Italian vinyl industry officials. That case was thrown out of court even before the movie first aired in 2002, a fact acknowledged only in a word slide at the end of the movie.

Tim Burns, president of the Vinyl Institute, representing manufacturers of vinyl resin, said, “We wish Ms. Sanzone good health but wonder how the producers of Blue Vinyl can continue to peddle a movie whose basic premises have been so undermined.”

Perhaps the ultimate challenge to the claims in Blue Vinyl came in a December 2004 draft report from the PVC Task Group of the U.S. Green Building Council. After nearly two years reviewing studies on the life-cycle health and environmental impacts of vinyl and major competing materials, the Task Group concluded that vinyl’s footprint is not much different from those of the competing materials and that a credit in the LEED rating system discouraging the use of vinyl could “steer designers to use materials which performed worse over their life-cycles.” Vinyl siding was one of the products scrutinized by the PVC Task Group.

To see a copy of the draft report, click here.

To see a copy of the final report, click here.

The Vinyl Institute represents the nation’s leading manufacturers involved in the production of vinyl plastic.