Vinyl acetate is a clear, colorless liquid. It has a sweet, pleasant, fruity smell, but the odor may be sharp and irritating to some people. You can easily smell vinyl acetate when it is in the air at levels around 0.5 ppm (half a part of vinyl acetate in 1 million parts of air). It readily evaporates into air and dissolves easily in water. Vinyl acetate is flammable and may be ignited by heat, sparks, or flames. Vinyl acetate is used to make other industrial chemicals (such as polyvinyl acetate polymers and ethylene-vinyl acetate copolymers). These other chemicals are used mostly to make glues for the packaging and building industries. They are also used to make paints, textiles, and paper. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has determined that vinyl acetate may be safely used as a coating or a part of a coating that is used in plastic films for food packaging, and as a modifier of food starch.
Vinyl acetate does not occur naturally in the environment. It enters the environment from factories and facilities that make, use, store, or dispose of it. When vinyl acetate is disposed of at waste sites or elsewhere in the environment, it can enter the soil, air, and water. Vinyl acetate will break down in the environment. The half-life (time it takes for 1/2 of the chemical to break down) for vinyl acetate is about 6 hours in air and 7 days in water. We have no information on how long vinyl acetate will stay in soil.