Manufacturers, Sterilizers Hit with Class Action Over Alleged Decades-Long Emission of Cancer-Causing Ethylene Oxide

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The owners and operators of Waukegan and Gurnee, Illinois manufacturing and sterilization facilities face a proposed class action over what one nearby resident alleges is the companies’ dangerous and reckless emission of cancer-causing ethylene oxide (EtO) gas into the environment.

According to the 40-page suit, the defendants—Medline Industries, Inc.; Steris Corp.; Steris Isomedix Services, Inc.; Cosmed Group Inc.; Cosmed Sterilization of Illinois, Inc.; Vantage Specialty Chemicals, Inc.; Vantage Specialties, Inc.; Lambent Technologies Corp.; BASF Corp.; and PPG Industries, Inc.—have for decades used large volumes of colorless, odorless EtO that was then emitted into the atmosphere and surrounding neighborhoods via controlled and uncontrolled releases. 

Per the suit, the companies have released the gas into the environment “for several decades” despite the fact that EtO’s cancer-causing effects have been “widely known since the 1940s.”

Those who live within a specific geographic area near the defendants’ facilities are “nearly 5 times more likely to develop cancer than the average American,” the lawsuit alleges, stressing that residents are entitled to medical monitoring in order to detect as early as possible the often latent illnesses and diseases that can result from EtO exposure. 

“Class Members unknowingly breathed in EtO when they brushed their teeth, pet their dogs, talked with their children about their day at school, and throughout their daily lives,” the plaintiff stresses. “Defendants never warned them about the dangerous EtO emissions that contaminated the air they breathed.” 

The lawsuit says the Gurnee facility manufactures surface-acting agents that lower the surface tension between two liquids, a gas and a liquid, or a liquid and a solid, allowing them to bind. Per the case, the manufacturing process for surfactants requires the use of EtO to make detergents, wetting agents, emulsifiers, foaming agents and dispersants. Similarly, the defendants responsible for the Waukegan facility also used large volumes of EtO to sterilize medical equipment and other products, the suit says. Generally, ethylene oxide is used to make everything from antifreeze to adhesives, the case adds. 

Per the suit, the Gurnee facility has emitted “huge volumes” of EtO into the air from at least 1988 through December 2019, with the Waukegan facility releasing similarly harmful amounts from 1994 up to and through the site’s temporary closure in January 2020. 

According to the complaint, the actual risks faced by those who live near the defendants’ facilities are even higher than Environmental Protection Agency estimates given the EPA has only accounted for emissions from the Waukegan facility.

Ethylene oxide is one of 187 pollutants the EPA has classified as an “air toxic,” the suit says, noting the gas is considered “dangerous, toxic, carcinogenic, and mutagenic” and is readily taken up by the lungs, absorbed into the bloodstream and distributed throughout the body. Acute inhalation exposure to high levels of EtO can cause headaches, dizziness, nausea, fatigue, respiratory irritation, vomiting, and gastrointestinal distress, and has been linked to lymphoma, myeloma, leukemia and breast cancer, the lawsuit relays.

As the suit tells it, manufacturers and EtO users have known of the gas’s cancer-causing effects since at least 1977, when the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) recommended ethylene oxide be considered potentially harmful to humans and that exposure be minimized, among other measures. In 1987, California officially recognized EtO as a carcinogen, per the case, with the federal government following suit in subsequent years. 

The lawsuit looks to represent a class comprised of all natural persons who live or have lived for a period of one year or more within the following census tracts at any time between January 1, 1988 and December 31, 2019: 

“17097861504, 17097862800, 17097862605, 17097862604, 17097863201, 17097862502; 17097861507, 17097861508, 17097861506, 17097861902, 17097861901, 17097861804, 17097861803, 17097866100; 17097861510, 17097862603, 17097862000, 17097862501, 17097862402” 

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