Blue Vinyl
| Blue Vinyl | |
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| Directed by | Daniel B. Gold Judith Helfand |
| Starring | William Baggett, Charlie Cray, Daniel B. Gold |
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Release date
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2002 |
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Running time
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98 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Blue Vinyl is a 2002 documentary film directed by Daniel B. Gold and Judith Helfand. With a lighthearted tone, the film follows one woman's quest for an environmentally sound cladding for her parents' house in Merrick, Long Island, New York. It also investigates the many negative health effects of polyvinyl chloride in its production, use and disposal, focusing on the communities of Lake Charles and Mossville, Louisiana, and Venice, Italy. Filming for Blue Vinyl began in 1994.
The documentary comes out of Helfand’s desire to have a safer environment for her parents to live in, after she discovers that they covered their house in vinyl siding. Throughout the documentary, Helfand intends on revealing that vinyl siding creates a dangerous living environment for people living in the house covered with vinyl siding, and for the environment around them.
To explore her theories, Helfand and her team visit three different locations. The first is Lake Charles, Louisiana, the home of one of the biggest PVC plants in the United States. She interviews various local residents and learns that most of them know the problems associated with the plant, but either don’t see ways to fix them or don’t have any desire to fix them. Helfand seems to become a bit frustrated with the lackadaisical attitude that some of the residents have in this section. Also during her time in Lake Charles, she meets some members of the Vinyl Institute, an organization that defends the interests of the vinyl industry, and representatives from the Institute initially refuse her questions about any harmful effects from PVC production. Helfand meets Elaine Ross as well, whose husband was killed as a result of working in the PVC production plant owned by Vista, and learns about her lawyer, William "Billy" Baggett, whose work in her case is starting to make a serious change towards safer plants and better regulations.
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