UIC expert calls for Gurnee school to be protected from EtO
Dr. Susan Buchanan explains blood tests on Lake County residents
UIC’s Dr. Susan Buchanan expressed concern about a school located near Vantage Specialty Chemicals in Gurnee, which emits ethylene oxide. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)
By Ted Cox
A local expert on children’s health called for a Gurnee school and its students to be protected from emissions of carcinogenic ethylene oxide at a public presentation Sunday in Lake County.
Dr. Susan Buchanan of the University of Illinois at Chicago spoke at the Warren Newport Public Library in Gurnee about the blood tests she conducted last August on 93 residents living near Medline Industries in Waukegan and Vantage Specialty Chemicals in Gurnee, both of which use EtO in their operations and emit it into the air.
Buchanan repeated her initial assertion made last month that residents within a half mile of Medline in Waukegan had EtO levels in the blood more than 1.5 times higher than what was found in those living farther away, which was close to expected base readings.
Buchanan also said recently recorded EtO levels in the air were actually higher at Vantage than at Medline, and she was asked about Spaulding Elementary School within a mile of Vantage.
“Children are considered to be vulnerable populations for any environmental contaminant,” she said, “and should be extra protected.
“As director of the Great Lakes Center for Children’s Environmental Health, I will say that children should not be exposed to environmental toxicants,” Buchanan added, to applause from those in attendance.
Dr. Susan Buchanan explains varying EtO levels to Lake County residents at a public presentation Sunday in Gurnee. (Facebook/Stop EtO in Lake County)
In December, when her blood data were first released, she said, “There is no safe level of exposure to ethylene oxide, and this pilot project suggests that facilities that emit the chemical put nearby communities at risk.”
“Unfortunately, there is so much unknown,” Buchanan said Sunday at the meeting held by the grassroots group Stop EtO in Lake County. “There’s a real gap in looking at communities and their low-level exposures and what’s it mean to be exposed over a long time.”
Buchanan acknowledged, “I’m not an expert on the air levels,” and confined herself to the blood work conducted last year and funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which detected an elevated cancer risk in the Willowbrook area in 2018 and attributed it to EtO emissions at Sterigenics, which has since been shut down and announced plans to leave the state.
But she made clear she felt the evidence was damning enough, even though the 93 people who submitted blood for the project were recruited by Stop EtO.
Medline issued a statement to WLS-TV Channel 7 Sunday dismissing the blood tests as invalid scientifically, for that very reason. Both Medline and Vantage have insisted they operate at legal levels for EtO emissions, but Illinois congressional Democrats have repeatedly called on the Environmental Protection Agency to reassess EtO levels since it was formally found to be a carcinogen at the end of 2016.
“There’s an assumption that there isn’t any safe cutoff level,” Buchanan said.
A 90-day monitoring period on EtO levels in Lake County is expected to conclude at the end of this month, and ATSDR is conducting a study similar to what it did in Willowbrook to determine if there are elevated cases of cancer in the area.
Stop EtO in Lake County continues to press public officials for relief from the EtO emissions, and has backed a bill to phase out the use of EtO, which passed the House in General Assembly last year, but was sidetracked in the Senate.
“We are not alarmists, and we are not a radical activist group,” said Jolanta Pomiotlo of Stop EtO at the start of Sunday’s meeting. She added that they were simply out to “end the emissions of EtO next to our homes and schools.”