Offgassing - Vinyl Sheets (reflection & waterproofing)

[Harabec]

It is fairly evident that vinyl in most common forms will have offgassing issues to a degree. I recently had been given a couple thousand square feet of some nice smooth flat white vinyl. I brought it to my hydroshop and had the guys look at it and they loved the material. However, upon stretching a nice chunk of it out and leaving it for awhile in my room I came back and could smell it.

I have read a few posts where offgassing was mentioned both in an ambient room air aspect but also offgassing/leaching of harmful fumes/vapors directly into hydro systems. There have been posts of where offgassing was manageable and not too bad to deal with, other times peole say OMG REPLACE IT IMMEDIATELY. I cannot really find anything on vinyl in our type of environments.

What does everyone think about vinyl sheets being using for liner (floor coverings for example) as well as using for reflective/diffuse surface for the walls? Anyone ever heard of vinyl offgassing being bad for plant growth?

Also, the biggest piece of have fits very nicely as a floor liner, but one side of it has printed graphics which brings up offgassing from the ink and its transfer medium. Im guessing I should remove it?

 

[Harabec]

I wanted to clarify that I am strictly referring to 'vinyl sheeting', the type of stuff you can on gigantic rolls and is commonly used in large (commercial, industrial) printing setups. I am not referring to vinyl tubing in any way.

 

[Harabec]

In the last part of my first post I mentioned vinyl with printed graphics on it, I went ahead and ripped it out since it was obvious the ink was offgassing. If I put anything in the room it will just be regular vinyl.

Ive spent a couple hours researching this now, both inside and outside of the horticulture realm. Given how ubiquitous vinyl is, I would think there would be substantial airplay if there were problems using it on an indoor horticultural environment.

Thanks again.