Months of community organizing, pleading and haranguing paid off last week when Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s administration banned Sterigenics from using cancer-causing ethylene oxide gas at its sterilization plant in west suburban Willowbrook.
About 40 miles away, residents of Lake County feel forgotten and left behind.
Two other companies — Vantage Specialty Chemicals in Gurnee and Medline Industries in Waukegan — continue to release the same toxic gas into neighborhoods where nearly 42,000 people live. Yet the Trump administration has brushed aside petitions from members of the Illinois congressional delegation to monitor air quality near the Lake County facilities, even though federal scientists estimate that, like in Willowbrook, surrounding areas face some of the highest long-term cancer risks in the nation from toxic air pollution.
The administration also has done nothing to inform Lake County residents about the hazards beyond creating a web page that hasn’t been updated since November.
Alarming concentrations of ethylene oxide detected near Sterigenics during two months of testing played a key role in Pritzker’s decision to order the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to shut down the Willowbrook sterilization plant, at least temporarily. The results provided residents and elected officials with powerful evidence challenging the company’s attempts to downplay potential health risks and make its political problems go away.
“In Lake County, at least, the state and federal government has dropped the ball time and time again,” said Tea Tanaka, a Grayslake resident who co-founded a newly formed group called Stop EtO in Lake County, which is attempting to harness the same energy and tenacity the Stop Sterigenics community group in Willowbrook relied on to spur regulators and politicians into action.
Tanaka’s husband, Soh, joined members of the Willowbrook group on a Tuesday bus trip to Springfield, where they met with state legislators who are pushing measures that would outlaw leaks of ethylene oxide from Sterigenics, Vantage, Medline and other facilities in Illinois. Another bill would force a review of state permits that haven’t been updated to reflect scientific research showing the chemical is far more dangerous than previously thought, and lawmakers are mulling a statewide ban on ethylene oxide sterilization.
“We deserve to know if the air we are breathing is safe,” said state Sen. Melinda Bush, a Grayslake Democrat who chairs the Environment and Conservation Committee and is co-sponsoring the bipartisan legislation with Sen. John Curran, R-Downers Grove.
The Chicago Tribune first reported in November that residents living near Medline face long-term cancer risks from toxic air pollution that are similar to U.S. EPA estimates for communities surrounding Sterigenics. In one census tract near the Waukegan facility, the risks are nearly five times higher than the national average.
Vantage could pose even greater risks. Officials blamed a clerical error for their failure to include the facility’s ethylene oxide emissions in the latest National Air Toxics Assessment, an occasional report compiled by the EPA to identify high-risk neighborhoods across the country where more thorough investigation is needed.
Agency scientists calculated local cancer risks based on 5,566 pounds of ethylene oxide emitted by Sterigenics and 3,058 pounds released by Medline during 2014. Vantage told another office at the EPA that it released 6,412 pounds of the toxic gas during the same period.
Federal and state regulators have repeatedly declined to answer why they haven’t responded as urgently as officials did last year in communities near Sterigenics, despite the fact there are more than twice as many people in Lake County breathing pollution that increases the long-term risks of breast cancer, leukemia and lymphomas at extremely low levels.
Kim Biggs, an Illinois EPA spokeswoman, would not say if the Pritzker administration is preparing to crack down on Vantage or Medline, citing the agency’s longtime policy of not commenting on potential legal action. Asked about air quality monitoring, she deferred to federal officials who are collecting samples near Sterigenics.
The U.S. EPA released its own statement, repeating earlier statements from its website while failing to address questions about the lack of air quality monitoring in Lake County.
Since the Tribune’s first story on the Lake County emissions, Vantage and Medline have applied for permits to install additional pollution-control equipment. Vantage — which reported its emissions of ethylene oxide dropped significantly in 2017, the last year for which data are available — has promised to measure concentrations at the edges of its property after the new controls are in place.
Medline, the nation’s largest privately held manufacturer and distributor of medical supplies, has joined chemical industry lobbyists who contend ethylene oxide poses few, if any, health risks to ordinary Americans.
Under pressure from politicians and the public, the company hired Jane Teta, a former Union Carbide toxicologist who co-authored several industry-funded studies rejected by the EPA and independent scientific reviewers. Teta, who has worked as a consultant for the American Chemistry Council, the industry’s chief trade group, is now a scientist at Exponent, a California-based firm with a long history of questioning the health risks of widely used chemicals.
The company also has called for another analysis of the chemical, part of a concerted effort by makers and users of ethylene oxide to overturn a stringent safety limit established by the EPA in 2016 after a decadelong evaluation and two rounds of independent review delayed several times by industry opposition.
“Any disruption of EO sterilization facilities would cause a near-immediate public health crisis,” the company says on its website, using an abbreviation for the chemical. “The enormous disruption in the supply chain would put catastrophic impact on Illinois’ hospital system.”
During a hearing Tuesday in Springfield, John Bomher, a lobbyist for the Illinois Health and Hospital Association said it is unclear if the shutdown of Sterigenics will have any effect on surgeries and other medical procedures. Hospitals tend to keep small inventories of equipment on hand, Bomher said, but are unaware where the products are sterilized before shipment.
Sterigenics is urging a federal judge to block the Pritzker administration from using authority in state law that allows the Illinois EPA to force the closure of any polluter that poses an “imminent and substantial endangerment” to public health. The company’s legal arguments echo its filings in a separate, bipartisan legal action by lawyers for Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and Robert Berlin, the DuPage County state’s attorney.
The company contends it has done nothing to violate its air pollution permit from the state agency. But critics note it can take years or decades for laws and regulations to address health dangers posed by toxic substances.
Federal officials still haven’t banned asbestos, a well-documented carcinogen that has killed thousands of people who suffered devastating lung diseases. There is no safe level of exposure to brain-damaging lead, though as recently as 1990 federal regulatory agencies wouldn’t take action to protect children unless concentrations in their blood exceeded 30 parts per billion.
Likewise, while the Trump administration has promised to introduce new regulations for sterilization plants using ethylene oxide, it appears unlikely industry groups will back down soon.
“There was so much hope and optimism when this process began six months ago,” Curran, the Republican state senator from Downers Grove, said of the intense debate prompted by the latest federal estimates of cancer risks. “Since then it’s been nothing but missed deadlines … and repeated failures on the part of the federal EPA. We, as the state of Illinois, have an obligation to protect our residents. That comes first and foremost.”
mhawthorne@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @scribeguy
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February 19, 2019 at 08:15PM
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