film

Blue Vinyl

User Rating	1 2 3 4 5
Producer(s)	Judith Helfand, Dan Gold
Release Date	2002
Format(s)	16mm, 35mm, video, DVD, web
Language(s)	English
Youth Media	no

Film Description

My father's answer to rotten wood. Everyone assured me vinyl siding was safe, and would
only let off toxic gas in the rare event of a house fire. But after my experience with cancer caused by
DES [a synthetic estrogen and anti-miscarriage drug prescribed to my mother and millions of other women],
I figured any material so loaded with synthetic chemicals had to pose some kind of risk. Later I asked my
dad, "If you had known that over the course of its lifecycle, from the factory to the incinerator, vinyl
produces a wide array of deadly pollutants that threaten our future with a global toxic crisis, would you
still have put it on the house?" "I hope not, honey," he said. "But they didn't write that on the
box." So, with a piece of vinyl siding firmly in hand (a remnant from my parent's house) I took off
on a journey to re-write the outside of the box.