On 5 April 2009 the Independent ran the story “Vinyl flooring ‘doubles chances’ of children being autistic’, study shows“. My first reaction to this was – good, more proof of the evil nature of vinyl! Well, of course it is not so simple, and I encourage you to read the comments after the original article that do a great job of elucidating the science, critiquing the headline, and recognizing the impact such findings can have on parents. The gist of the article is that researchers following 5,000 Swedish children did find an association between vinyl flooring and autism, but that isn’t the same as a cause-and-effect relationship. As I learned to say in graduate school at the end of all my research papers, basically, more research is needed.
Now, I’m in the early days of this blog and I really want it to be about fantastic design solutions, rather than environmental problems. So without focusing too heavily on the negative, I will say I’m not a fan of vinyl (I know, I know – it’s so cheap!).
There’s loads of information out there on the internet about vinyl. One source I really like is the movie website Blue Vinyl. Basically, as the Blue Vinyl factsheet says, vinyl has a very toxic lifecyle, releasing harmful chemicals during manufacturing, use, and disposal.
By the way, vinyl is no. 3 on bottles.
Photo by Cheryl Kempton.
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