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New plastic shower curtains made from vinyl have a distinctive, pungent smell that often lingers in the home for days.

Now, after analyzing the chemicals released by these curtains when they are fresh out of the package, environmentalists say they can explain why the curtains smell so much and why they sometimes cause reactions such as headaches and nausea.

A new report says vinyl curtains off-gas a slew of chemicals - more than 100 - known as volatile organic compounds, which are a major contributor to indoor air pollution. The curtains also contain traces of metals such as lead, cadmium and mercury and high levels of phthalates, including one variety that Health Canada has recommended be prohibited in children's toys.

The finding of all the substances explains "the common-sense conclusion that something that smells so strongly is probably not good for you," says Rick Smith, executive director of Environmental Defence, a Toronto group that released the report yesterday along with the Center for Health, Environment & Justice, a Virginia-based activist group that organized the testing, and the Canadian Environmental Law Association.

Mr. Smith contended that the plastic curtains are "contaminating the air we breathe" and called on the federal government to ban them.

But the degree of health risk, if any, from shower curtain chemicals is not known. Health Canada said in response to questions that it "is not aware of any established or recognized exposure standards" for the off-gassing of volatile compounds from shower curtains and doesn't regulate the bathroom staple under the Hazardous Products Act.

The plastics industry dismissed the environmentalists' report as scaremongering.

"These products have been on the market for ages - for decades - and there has never been a health-and-safety concern raised. As far as we know, nobody's ever been harmed by a shower curtain," said Marion Axmith, director general of the Vinyl Council of Canada, an industry trade group.

The council says those sensitive to the smell will find it dissipates after a few days.

Tests were conducted on five shower curtains purchased in the United States from major retailers, such as Bed Bath & Beyond, Sears and Wal-Mart. Only one of the brands - from Bed Bath & Beyond - was also sold in Canada, although Mr. Smith said a review by his group at Canadian department stores found vinyl curtains widely available.

The dispute over the shower curtains is part of a larger skirmish between chemical companies and environmentalists over polyvinyl chloride, or PVC. Environmentalists have misgivings about PVC because it can form dangerous dioxins when products containing it are incinerated or burned in backyard barrels, and the chemical used to make it can cause liver and other cancers in workers at chemical plants who are to its fumes.

Companies counter that high-temperature incineration largely eliminates the dioxin problem, and plant workers are being protected from the cancer hazard.

PVC plastic is also a possible human exposure route for phthalates, a family of chemicals that some recent research suggests can interfere with normal hormone production in males.

Companies add large amounts of phthalates to vinyl to make the plastic more pliable, but the chemical is subject to leaching.

A phthalate known as DEHP was found in all the curtains, with levels up to 25 per cent by weight, and another, DINP, at up to 39 per cent by weight.

DEHP has been listed as a toxic substance in Canada, and Health Canada has proposed but not implemented a prohibition limiting the chemical to no more than 0.1 per cent of the weight of toys used by children under 3.

The testing found that curtain off-gassing of volatile organic compounds, chemicals such as toluene and xylene, was high during the first few days, but dropped to undetectable levels in a few weeks. But some of the initial levels were 16 times higher than what is recommended in indoor air-quality guidelines established by the U.S. Green Building Council and Washington State's indoor air-quality program, according to the report.

Environmentalists are also nervous about the mixture of chemicals coming from the curtains. Under current government testing programs, chemicals are evaluated for their safety one at a time, and not in the complex soup to which people are actually exposed.

The report called on retailers to phase out vinyl shower curtains and replace them with alternative materials, suggesting organically produced cotton as an option.

At least one major retailer in Canada - IKEA - has sold PVC-free shower curtains for years.

IKEA started eliminating the sale of PVC-containing products in the early 1990s because of the controversy over the chemical. The company "decided for precautionary reasons to gradually phase out PVC because there were some questions around it," said Agamemnon Spiridoulias, an IKEA spokesman.