Japanese firms stop use of vinyl chloride

Several major Japanese makers of household products and cosmetics plan to stop using vinyl chloride for containers and wrapping materials. Although easily processed and versatile, vinyl chloride is likely to produce the toxic gas dioxin when burned.
Shiseido Co., Japan's leading cosmetics maker, which used more than one hundred tons of vinyl chloride in fiscal 1996, has decided to use polypropylene and other materials for all cosmetics containers by March 1999.
Leading household products maker Kao Corp. has been decreasing its use of vinyl chloride for the past ten years. The company has already stopped using it for detergent containers and currently uses it only for bottle labels.
Lion Corp., another household sundries manufacturer, used 500 ton of vinyl chloride in 1996, which it plans to reduce to 300 tons in 1998 and zero by March 2000. In 1996, Lion lowered the amount of vinyl chloride it used to one-third its 1990 level.