AG Raoul joins calls for new EtO standards
Attorneys suing Sterigenics back stand, call it ‘critical and urgent public-health issue’
Attorney General Kwame Raoul is calling on the EPA to set strict new regulations on emissions of ethylene oxide. (Blue Room Stream)
By Ted Cox
Attorney General Kwame Raoul has joined 10 of his state counterparts from across the nation in urging the Environmental Protection Agency to set stricter limits on emissions of carcinogenic ethylene oxide.
Current federal standards “fail to adequately protect workers and communities from the harmful effects of EtO,” according to a news release issued by Raoul’s office.
“Illinois has already acted to significantly reduce EtO emissions, but there is an urgent need for the EPA to strengthen national EtO standards to protect communities throughout the country,” Raoul said in a statement. “The EPA has a responsibility to protect the health and safety of residents by adequately regulating hazardous air pollutants. I urge the EPA to live up to this responsibility and implement the standards needed to address the severe risks to public health and the environment posed by EtO emissions.”
The core issue, according to a letter the attorneys general sent to the EPA, is that the Trump administration never reassessed permissible levels of EtO emissions after it was formally added to the EPA’s list of “Group A carcinogens” in the last months of the Obama administration in December 2016.
A federal report issued in August 2018 revealed an elevated risk of cancer in the area surrounding Sterigenics in southwest-suburban Willowbrook and blamed EtO emissions at the sterilization firm. That set off grassroots drives to halt EtO emissions at Sterigenics, as well as at Medline Industries and Vantage Specialty Chemicals in Lake County north of Chicago. But even as complaints increased and the Illinois EPA moved to shut down Sterigenics a year ago under Gov. Pritzker, all three businesses continued to insist they were operating under legal limits for EtO emissions.
Sterigenics announced in September that it would not attempt to reopen in Illinois.
By the end of 2018, Democrats in the Illinois congressional delegation were calling for the EPA to set stricter limits on EtO emissions. Raoul and the 10 other attorneys general joined those calls last week, with their letter charging that legal EtO levels had not changed since a federally mandated “residual risk analysis and technology review” conducted in 2006. They charged additionally that the “EPA is now more than five years late in conducting the next required eight-year technology review.”
Lawyers for clients suing Sterigenics immediately backed Attorney General Raoul’s call for tightened EtO emission standards. (One Illinois/Zachary Sigelko)
Raoul’s action was immediately applauded by attorneys representing clients in what they say are “at least 75 cases of cancer” reported in towns surrounding Sterigenics. “Those of us representing the community members whose health and lives have been devasted by ethylene-oxide emissions commend Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and the 10 other attorneys general for their engagement and advocacy on this critical and urgent public health issue,” said Antonio Romanucci, founding partner of Romanucci & Blandin and the court-appointed lead counsel for the legal group suing Sterigenics. “I would emphasize that, because there is absolutely no safe level of EtO, that no emissions should be allowed anywhere near residential areas.”
Raoul’s office pointed out that the Illinois General Assembly passed the Matt Haller Act last year and Pritzker immediately signed it into law, prohibiting any sterilization company from “operating in Illinois unless the facility captures 100 percent of all EtO emissions and meets reduced emissions requirements.” It was named after a Willowbrook-area resident who died of cancer shortly before it was passed.
The letter from the attorneys general called on the EPA to set federal standards requiring that all EtO emissions be captured, and to “reduce emissions to the atmosphere from each exhaust point by at least 99.9 percent.” It also called on the EPA to conduct mandatory testing and install new equipment to “maintain a continuous emissions-monitoring system.”
The 10 other attorneys general signing the letter serve in Delaware, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont.