Search Results for: ethylene oxide

detail of white smoke polluted sky
Emissions
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Ethylene Oxide 2023 Year-End Round-Up!

Nearly ten months after settling over 870 Illinois-based Cook County ethylene oxide (EtO) exposure claims for $408 million (covered by ELM here), at the beginning of the final quarter of 2023, Sterigenics, one of the world’s largest commercial sterilizers, along with its parent company Sotera, agreed to settle 79 lawsuits relating to EtO emissions from the Sterigenics sterilizing plant in Cobb County, Georgia, for an estimated $35 million, submitting its settlement proposal to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in late October. Just as …

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Judges Or Auctioneer Gavel On The Dollar Cash Background
Emissions / Illinois
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$408 Million Ethylene Oxide Settlement Resolves Over 870 Claims

On January 9, 2023, Sotera Health Company announced it reached agreements to settle more than 870 ethylene-oxide cases pending against its subsidiaries, including Sterigenics, in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Ill. and the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

The claims arose out of operations of Sterigenics’ Willowbrook, Ill. medical sterilization facility, which closed in 2019 following backlash regarding ethylene oxide emissions. Per the terms of the agreements, Sterigenics will pay $408 million, “subject to substantially all of the plaintiffs …

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Female engineer working on maintenance in bottling plant
Due Diligence / Emerging Issues / Texas
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Ethylene Oxide Alert: Deliberative Process Privilege Found To Not Justify Withholding EtO Data in Texas

Our blog recently reported on the first jury verdict concerning alleged ethylene oxide exposure and has previously reported a number of times here generally about ethylene oxide (EtO).  Ethylene oxide is a gas commonly used to make other chemicals utilized in a variety of consumer and industrial goods, including fabric, detergents, medicines, and adhesives. It is used to sterilize medical devices and spices and to kill microorganisms in grains. EtO is a well-established sterilizing agent highly efficient at preventing bacteria from growing on, or within, products during …

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Emissions / EPA / Illinois
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First-of-its-kind Ethylene Oxide Verdict Awards Record Damages Against Defendant Sterigenics

On September 19, 2022, a Cook County (Illinois) jury awarded $363 million to 70-year-old plaintiff Susan Kamuda  in the first of many lawsuits against industrial sterilization company Sterigenics.  These lawsuits accuse the company of a reckless, decades-long pollution of Willowbrook, Illinois with ethylene oxide.  The jury in this case went beyond the damages requested by Ms. Kamuda, who lived within a quarter-mile of Sterigenics’ Willowbrook facility for more than 30 years.  While Ms. Kamuda only asked for $21 million in compensatory damages, the jury awarded …

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Emerging Issues / Litigation
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Ethylene Oxide—Back in the Spotlight with 150 New Lawsuits

Ethylene oxide (EtO) is a chemical long used to sterilize products that cannot be sterilized with steam, such as medical equipment and surgical devices. One of 187 hazardous air pollutants that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulates, EtO has been shown to cause various cancers when inhaled over time. In December 2016, the EPA concluded that EtO gas, a human carcinogen, was more dangerous than previously thought, and updated its risk value. Although the EPA subsequently moved to update rules under the Clean Air Act …

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Clean Air Act / EPA
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Ethylene Oxide: The Coming Storm?

Ethylene oxide is a gas commonly used to make other chemicals utilized in a variety of consumer and industrial goods, including fabric, detergents, medicines, and adhesives. It’s even used to sterilize medical devices and spices and to kill microorganisms in grains. But ethylene oxide is acknowledged as a known human carcinogen (cancer-causing compound or substance) in high-level concentrations and extended periods of exposure. Ethylene oxide has been linked to non-Hodgkin lymphoma, leukemia, multiple myeloma, and breast cancer, among many other cancers and physical ailments.

The …

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Emerging Issues / Illinois
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Illinois Legislature Advance Ethylene Oxide Ban

On October 30, 2019, the Illinois House of Representatives voted to approve legislation that would effectively ban the use of ethylene oxide, which is a chemical used for sterilizing the majority of medical devices found in hospital operating rooms and other health care settings. In moving forward with the legislation, Illinois lawmakers rejected warnings from federal health care regulators and medical device and surgical tool manufacturers that the measure would lead to shortages of properly sterilized health care tools. To lawmakers, however, the legislation is …

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Emissions / EPA
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Common Ground Found in Attempt to Limit Release of Ethylene Oxide Used for Sterilization

In a rare showing of bipartisanship before the mid-term elections, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, a Democrat, and Robert Berlin, a Republican State’s Attorney for DuPage County, filed a lawsuit seeking to place limits on emissions of ethylene oxide from a plant owned by Sterigenics U.S., LLC. The lawsuit alleges that the plant has released dangerous levels of the gas for over a decade. Ethylene oxide is a potent gas used to sterilize medical instruments, pharmaceutical drugs and food.

“We are alleging that since at …

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Ecological catastrophe
Emissions / EPA
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EPA Finalizes New Rule Requiring More Than 200 Chemical Plants to Reduce Toxic Emissions

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced April 9 a set of final rules under sections 111 and 112 of the Clean Air Act (CAA) to significantly reduce toxic air pollution from more than 200 chemical plants in the United States.

The plants affected make products such as synthetic organic chemicals, plastics, paints, synthetic fabrics, pesticides, petrochemical products, and various polymers and resins, including neoprene. The new rules strengthen protections for communities living near these industrial facilities, especially along the Gulf Coast, and it is anticipated …

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Close-up of exhaust fan on factory roof
EPA
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EPA’s Final EtO Rule Finally Finalized

The Environmental Protection Agency on March 14 announced final amendments to the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) applicable to 90 large commercial sterilization facilities that use ethylene oxide (EtO), a chemical to which long-term exposure can cause cancer or other serious injury.

The EtO rulemaking process has engendered some criticism – most dramatically in lawsuits filed against the EPA by advocates representing neighbors of EtO facilities who claim the rulemaking process was too little too late (covered by ELM here). But …

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