Hello, Dan, and thank you for your inquiry. At this time we do not know of an at-home water test kit capable of detecting vinyl chloride, but we do know that National Testing Laboratories offers mail-in water testing services that include vinyl chloride detection. Links to two of their capable products to follow:

WaterCheck City Standard

and...

WaterCheck City Deluxe

Note:  NTL typically sends water test results back to its customers via email in approximately 10 business days.

What is Vinyl Chloride and How Does It Get Into Drinking Water?

Vinyl chloride is a colorless organic gas with a sweet odor. It is used in the manufacture of numerous products in buildings and construction, the automotive industry, electrical wire insulation and cables, piping, industrial and household equipment, medical supplies, and is depended upon heavily by the rubber, paper, and glass industries.

In other words, you can find potential sources of vinyl chloride all around you, but thankfully industry USUALLY keeps a close eye on its supplies and tries hard to minimize leaks of vinyl chloride into the environment.

National Testing Labs 30 Parameter Test Kit w/ Laboratory Testing

National Testing Labs 83 Parameter Test Kit w/ Laboratory Testing

National Testing Labs 103 Parameter Test Kit w/ Laboratory Testing

Wikipedia.org has this to say about vinyl chloride: “This colorless compound is an important industrial chemical chiefly used to produce the polymer polyvinyl chloride (PVC). At ambient pressure and temperature, vinyl chloride is a gas with a sickly sweet odor. It is highly toxic, flammable and carcinogenic.” ( source )

More than 300 McCullom Lake residents have signed up to get their wells tested for carcinogenic vinyl chloride at Rohm and Haas’ expense.

Of 515 surveys sent out last month by village government, 325 came back wanting the free test, while only 11 responded no, Village President Terry Counley said. Rohm and Haas offered in August to pay for it, more than four years into a series of lawsuits blaming pollution from its Ringwood plant for causing a brain cancer cluster.

“I’d say it’s a very good sign. We’re all in this boat together over here, and we need the answers,” Counley said.

Counley must select a water testing company from a list of firms accredited by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. Only people who signed up will get their wells tested, and Counley said he would like to get it done before winter.

Three former village next-door neighbors diagnosed with brain cancer filed the first lawsuits in April 2006, alleging that decades of seepage from a closed 8-acre waste pit fouled their air and groundwater with vinyl chloride and other chemicals.

Thirty-two lawsuits as of today blame the pollution for brain and pituitary tumors in McCullom Lake and the Lakeland Park subdivision in McHenry. ( source )

Thankfully the residents of that region in Illinois have banded together and taken a stand on the matter of well water pollution. With any hope these folks will find some answers from the testing… and after that we hope other communities will band together and investigate possible sources of suspected well water contamination.

Can the average person test their own water?

While the task of testing well or ground water for the presence of compounds such as vinyl chloride will remain in the hands of certified water testing experts such as National Testing Laboratories, the average person CAN test for other, more common drinking water contaminants.

Companies such as SenSafe and WaterSafe make easy-to-use, accurate at-home water test kits for a number of critical drinking water parameters such as arsenic in water, lead in water, bacteria in water, and heavy metals in water, etc.

Consumers have the option of purchasing drinking water test kits for individual parameters or in multi-parameter test kits such as the Water Quality Test Kit from SenSafe and the City Water Test Kit from WaterSafe.