Conflicting outlooks on detergent pods: Call for health and environment safety or an attack?

17 Nov 2022 --- According to the American Cleaning Institute (ACI), a “misinformation campaign on valuable chemistry used in detergent products” is spreading through a petition led by Blueland and Plastic Pollution Coalition.

The petition calls on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for health and environmental safety checks of Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA, also known as PVOH) – used in dishwasher and laundry pods and sheets – and its removal from the Safer Choice List and Safer Chemical Ingredients List until the EPA can complete the requested safety testing.

“PVA is plastic and products that contain PVA should acknowledge that reality. Billions of plastic detergent pods are used in the US alone and there are serious concerns about what these products are doing to water quality. This is an important issue that the EPA needs to take seriously,” Judith Enck, former EPA regional administrator and president of Beyond Plastics (a participant in the petition), tells PersonalCareInsights.

ACI, the trade association for the US cleaning product supply chain, highlights incorrect data and flawed models presented in the petition. “We believe this recent effort by NGOs to petition the EPA is part of an ongoing marketing campaign funded by a company with an interest in preventing other companies from using this technology,” says ACI.

“This marketing campaign, which aims to discredit PVOH and the companies that use it, ignores decades of science and research demonstrating the biodegradability of this chemistry.”

Responding to ACI’s remarks, Blueland shares with PersonalCareInsights that ACI has taken “an extremely strong and misleading stance as it is in the best interest of the members of their association who fund ACI…including Monosol (the leading supplier of PVA to the laundry and dish industry), all major consumer packaged goods companies (Procter & Gamble, SC Johnson, Clorox, Unilever) and major oil companies that provide petroleum-based chemicals (Shell and Exxon Mobil).”

Meanwhile, an EPA spokesperson tells us that the “EPA will review and respond to the petition.”The petitioners note that due to the unknown dangers that PVA poses to the environment, the EPA has an obligation to check for safety.

Petition for health and environment safety
The petition was submitted under US Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and is joined by nonprofit organizations fighting plastic pollution and climate change.

“Research shows that over 75% of plastic pods just from laundry and dishwasher detergents remain intact throughout conventional wastewater treatment and may persist in our environment, waterways, oceans and soils,” Blueland states in the petition.

It elaborates that the water-soluble thermoplastic polymer requires specific conditions in most wastewater treatment plants and the presence of specific, acclimated microorganisms to biodegrade completely, which seldom is the case. Inherently, PVA finds its way back into the environment.

“Due to the unknown dangers that PVA poses to the environment, the EPA has an obligation, under the TSCA, to test PVA and its end of life in marine and aquatic ecosystems, as well as soil environments, to determine the implications for human and environmental health,” the petition emphasizes.

“The EPA currently lists PVA/PVOH on its Safer Choice and Safer Chemical Ingredients lists. But a close look at research on PVA and the EPA’s generous criteria for ‘safe’ standards, shows that PVA is not verifiably biodegradable,” Plastic Pollution Coalition tells PersonalCareInsights.

“According to EPA standards, if 60% of carbon in a substance is degraded in 28 days, it passes the OECD 301 and can be called ‘readily biodegradable’ – even though it is not necessarily clear what happens to the remaining mass and chemistry of a substance.”

Conflicting views on PVA safety
ACI states that PVA films are designed to dissolve entirely in washing and dishwashing machines and are safe to use in the home, meeting rigorous test methods to ensure they are biodegradable after use.ACI believes that the petition is a marketing campaign fueled by companies' self-vested interests.

“Because this chemistry has enabled this innovative laundry and automatic dishwashing product formats, it is extremely disappointing to learn about the misinformation being spread about PVA/PVOH,” it underscores.

“The publication that these interest groups are relying upon to attack their competitor’s products presents a flawed model based on theoretical assumptions and uses flawed data in that model.”

To verify the biodegradability claims of PVA, PersonalCareInsights reached out to a chemist and polymer expert. “PVA is safe and water-soluble. It does not form microplastics and degrades rapidly,” says Chris DeArmitt, president at Phantom Plastics.

ACI further enlists an independent analysis of the research cited in the petition to elucidate that the estimates of US wastewater treatment losses from leakage to the environment are based on data from India, which is “incongruent in their attempts to assess PVA use in the US.”

Reportedly, the petitioners incorrectly state that microorganisms required to degrade PVA are not found in wastewater treatment facilities. The market data quoted is “self-generated” that overestimates detergent packet sales by three times, according to ACI.

“[The paper in question] uses only worst-case estimates for biodegradation data from grades of PVA that are not designed for use in detergent applications [and] incorrectly states that rapid biodegradation of PVA is only possible within specific conditions while citing data and literature that confirms the opposite,” concludes ACI.

By Radhika Sikaria