Stop EtO asks Cullerton to advance phaseout bill
Duckworth, Durbin charge EPA is ‘rubber-stamping weak standards’ on EtO
Members of Stop EtO in Lake County protest outside the offices of Senate President John Cullerton. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)
By Ted Cox
CHICAGO — Members of Stop EtO in Lake County protested outside the district officers of Senate President John Cullerton Thursday demanding that he call a bill for a vote that would phase out the use of ethylene oxide in sterilization.
EtO has been a hot-button issue since a federal report last year identified an elevated cancer risk in the Willowbrook area and blamed Sterigenics, a company that had been releasing the carcinogen into the air for decades. After being attacked by the grassroots group Stop Sterigenics, the company was shut down by Gov. Pritzker’s administration earlier this year, and after making attempts to reopen it announced last month it would be closing up shop. But two Lake County companies, Medline Industries in Waukegan and Vantage Specialty Chemicals in Gurnee, continue to use EtO.
Stop EtO is backing a bill that would phase out EtO in Illinois, House Bill 3888, introduced by state Rep. Rita Mayfield of Waukegan and sponsored by state Sens. John Curran, Melinda Bush, and Jacqueline Collins in the Senate. It cleared the House during last week’s veto session and was assigned to the Executive Committee in the Senate on Wednesday. The group called on Cullerton to advance the bill and make sure it gets called for a vote during next week’s veto session.
“We’re not averse to the use of ethylene oxide,” said Syed Karim, of Green Oaks. “We just want it not to be used where people can be affected by it — children and densely populated areas. It is carcinogenic, explosive, and very flammable.”
The group delivered postcards and other materials calling for action on the bill to the Senate president’s district office in Chicago on Thursday.
Cullerton staffer Andi Vanderkolk counseled calm. “You’re doing everything you need to be doing,” she told the group. “It helps. It shows community support. It shows community pressure.”
“We’re not averse to the use of ethylene oxide. We just want it not to be used where people can be affected by it.”
Syed Karim of Stop EtO in Lake County (One Illinois/Ted Cox)
The bill is tacitly supported by Gov. Pritzker, who’s said local residents should “get what they want” in addressing EtO concerns, but according to Vanderkolk it’s “still in discussion” in the Senate. She pointed out the House had changed effective dates within the bill before passing it, and that may alter the sense of urgency senators feel as they face the final three days of the fall veto session next week.
Cullerton spokesman John Patterson later added that the Senate president has supported previous EtO bills, and pointed out that Mayfield has already said more changes may be necessary to her legislation.
“It’s not going to be over next week,” Vanderkolk said, pointing out the bill would still be pending in the Senate next year even if it’s not passed during the veto session.
Members of Stop EtO in Lake County, however, said they feel a sense of urgency right now and want the bill passed as soon as possible.
“We’re being poisoned every day,” said a woman who identified herself as Francesca R. of Gurnee. “We’re trying not to get cancer.” Saying that she checks the wind every day, she charged that 210,000 people live in the “hot zone” within range of the Lake County EtO firms, and that the Gurnee Mills shopping center and Great America theme park draw hundreds of thousands of others to the area.
Stop EtO said they’re planning to lobby in Springfield next week, and the bill is on the agenda for a Senate committee hearing Wednesday. “We will be there,” said Karim.
Also Thursday, U.S. Sens. Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin took shots at a new memo released Wednesday by the U.S. Environmental Protect Agency on EtO. Duckworth, Durbin, and other members of the Illinois congressional delegation have been calling on the EPA to reassess permissible standards on EtO for a year. It was declared a carcinogen in the waning months of the Obama administration three years ago, but under President Trump the EPA never adjusted legal limits — thus allowing Sterigenics, Medline, and Vantage to all insist they’ve been operating within the law.
Durbin and Duckworth issued a statement Thursday calling the EPA’s first attempts to amend its EtO policy “deeply disturbing.” The EPA said it was consulting “sterilization experts, medical-device manufacturers, and other government agencies to advance innovative ways to sterilize medical devices with lower levels of currently used agents,” but that it was also “beginning to examine the question of whether ethylene oxide is present more broadly in the air in the U.S., and if so, at what levels.” Sterigenics blamed other sources including car exhaust for EtO in the air in Willowbrook — a claim that was debunked when EtO levels plummeted after the firm was shut down. The EPA also cited its own statement issued last month on “concerns with medical-device availability due to certain sterilization-facility closures.”
“We are alarmed that the agency is even considering rubber-stamping weak standards that would continue to expose our constituents to elevated cancer risks,” Duckworth and Durbin stated. “It is also unacceptable that EPA is failing to propose fence-line monitoring after dangerous malfunctions have been reported at EtO facilities. EPA lacks a coherent plan to address ethylene-oxide sterilizers, a major source of ethylene-oxide exposure.” They charged the EPA was undermining its own Integrated Risk Information System “when it throws its own dedicated civil servants under the bus and invites corporate interests to trash” the program.