Polyvinyl chlorides surround daily life. From shower curtains, pipes, toys and house siding to that frustrating bubble packaging that encases products, and the credit cards that most people use to buy them, PVC is ubiquitous. In 2001, Americans threw away more than 1.4 million tons of the stuff.

But this plastic culture needs to change or America could face a “waste management crisis,” according to a study released Tuesday by a coalition of environmental groups.

Mike Belliveau, spokesman for the Maine-based Environmental Health Strategy Center, Tuesday called PVC a “poison plastic.”

Vinyl, which is marked with a No. 3 in the triangular recycling symbol, is recycled less than 1 percent of the time. No Maine municipalities accept PVC as part of their recycling programs.

When it is burned – whether in municipal and medical incinerators or in backyard piles – PVC releases harmful dioxins into the atmosphere, he said.

“Most people don’t think about plastics, or they think about it as a benign material,” Belliveau said Tuesday. “The level of public awareness about PVC is remarkably low.”

Here in Maine, 70 percent of the plastic (of all types) that goes through municipal waste systems is incinerated – more than 107,000 tons in 1999, according to State Planning Office figures.

The Environmental Health Strategy Center’s study stated that Maine incinerated more than 5,000 tons of PVC alone in 2002, burning a higher percentage of its vinyl than any state in the nation.A 1997 Maine Department of Environmental Protection study revealed that backyard burn barrels are an even more significant source of dioxin because they lack all the modern pollution controls that incinerators are required to install.

While it’s clear that dioxin is often produced by burning garbage, some plastic industry groups argue that PVC gets too much blame, citing a federal study in which dioxin emissions did not rise as the amount of vinyl burned increased.

Vinyl is just one of many sources of dioxin in the waste stream, Allen Blakey of The Vinyl Institute, based in Arlington, Va., said Tuesday.

“You can get dioxin without having any vinyl in what you’re burning,” he said.

However, Maine has taken a strong stand on the issue, codifying in law that PVC is defined as a dioxin-forming product – particularly when burned. DEP also has listed PVC in its definition of “household hazardous wastes” that should be disposed of with care.

“It’s an issue of continued importance to us,” Paula Clark, director of DEP’s Division of Solid Waste, said Tuesday.

Dioxins do not exist in nature. Rather, they result from the chlorine compounds that go into the making of PVC. Chlorine is also used in other industries, like paper bleaching and copper smelting, which result in dioxin pollution.

When released into the air, dioxins fall onto bodies of water, where the fat-soluble chemicals are taken up by fish and other organisms. Maine currently has dioxin advisories telling people to limit their consumption of many freshwater species, as well as lobster tomalley. The chemicals can also fall on to crops to enter the food supply, either directly or via livestock.

Once in the body, dioxins have been linked to cancers, learning disabilities and birth defects. There is evidence to suggest that they may serve as endocrine disrupters, interfering with the normal activities of hormones, Belliveau said.

Belliveau also worries about the health impacts of PVC outgassing in our cars, offices and homes, polluting the air as some of the chemicals in vinyl evaporate.

That “new car smell” is the surest sign that plastics are releasing their chemical components. The same process can occur after PVC is buried in landfills, contaminating the environment, he said.

The smell arises because chemicals known as “plasticizers” are used to ensure that vinyl products remain soft and pliable. Different chemicals are used as plasticizers, some of which are known or suspected to be carcinogens, and others which are known to be safe, according to Ed Vignealut, who works on hazardous waste issues at the DEP.

But many of the chemicals used have not been studied, he said.

“There’s a large range of plasticizers,” Vigneault said. “Some of these compounds are harmful and some are pretty innocuous.”

Blakey, the vinyl industry spokesman, argued that the distinctive smell of a new car, or shower curtain for that matter, comes from other materials, such as glues and dyes, that go into production, not plasticizers.

The American Chemistry Council goes so far as to say that the category of plasticizers that most concern environmentalists, called phthalates, “do not evaporate” and even if they did, would not be a health hazard.

Yet the federal Food and Drug Administration is concerned enough that it issued a national safety warning about phthalates in soft vinyl medical equipment like medicine bags and tubes. Here in Maine hospitals are phasing out the use of PVC.

A number of leading manufacturers, including General Motors, Mattel, Nike and several other toy and cosmetics companies, have agreed in recent years to phase out the use of all polyvinyl chlorides. Tuesday, the Environmental Health Strategy Center called on several more major corporations to do the same.

Belliveau hopes that the state’s planned household hazardous waste program can receive funding to start helping to divert products like PVC away from incinerators to landfills.

But the best solution, he said Tuesday, is to watch out for and avoid the plastic product with the No. 3 symbol or a letter V, indicating vinyl. Substitutes made from glass, wood, metal or recyclable plastic are readily available for nearly every PVC product on the market, he said.

“Leave it on the shelf to protect your health,” Belliveau said.

The full report, called “PVC: Bad News Comes in 3’s” is available online at www.preventharm.org