Trump appointees obstructed investigation of Sterigenics, cancer-causing emissions, EPA says

[TexasTowelie]

A senior political appointee in the Trump administration stifled attempts by Chicago-based environmental regulators to investigate and remedy cancer-causing ethylene oxide releases in the Chicago area, a new government report says.

The unnamed official instructed the Chicago office of the federal Environmental Protection Agency to refrain from inspecting ethylene oxide facilities including the Sterigenics medical sterilization plant in Willowbrook unless asked to by state officials, according to the report from the EPA’s inspector general.

Citing information investigators gathered from managers from the EPA’s Chicago region office, the report says “senior leaders” instructed staff members of the agency to limit air monitoring around the Sterigenics plant, refrain from seeking health and risk assessments from federal health officials and hold off on sending requests for information to ethylene oxide facilities in the area.

Trump appointees also withheld information almost three years ago when air monitoring detected a potential threat to residents in Willowbrook, according to the EPA inspector general’s report.

Read more: https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/4/16/22387994/epa-trump-sterigenics-ethylene-oxide

[Grins]

1. Is this where we remind-

“Elections have consequences”?

Our two political parties ARE NOT the same.

[NNadir]

2. Ethylene oxide is one of the critical chemicals on which modern technology depends.

It's use in sterilization is actually trivial compared to its use in major industries, including the car industry - which produces billion ton quantities of toxic and carcinogenic gasoline. It is immediately clear that gasoline related cancers have killed far more people than ethylene oxide cancers have ever done.

Ethylene oxide (EtO) is the starting material for ethylene glycol, on which antifreeze depends, as does many other heat exchanger type devices. Probably one of the largest uses is to make acrylonitrile, a widely used polymer, also used in cars, as well as in the manufacture of reverse osmosis membranes for water purification.

I suspect strongly, including its trivial use as a sterilizing agent, it's production may have saved more lives than it cost.

I have worked with it and related compounds myself (as well as much worse chemicals, including gasoline) and last I looked I've lived a long time, longer perhaps than I deserved.

[TexasTowelie]

3. I agree that EtO is relatively low on the list of carcinogenic substances that most people are

exposed to in the lab and the production of other chemicals. I suspect that is some other chemical that might be responsible for any increase in the number of cancer deaths near the plant.

[ProfessorGAC]

4. Worked With It, Too

Quite a lot!
While we treated it as carcinogenic, I always felt the biggest hazard was flammability & BLEVE.
Unlike most organic compounds, there is no upper explosion limit for EO.
Nearly 40% of molecular mass is oxygen. While less efficient at very high concentration in air, even at 100% combustion is self-sustaining. And the energy release per unit mass is very high & rapid.
While we treated the health hazards with respect, it was always combustion about which we were most concerned.

[NNadir]

5. My experience with it...

...was entirely on a lecture bottle scale in the hood. I used it for a few reactions that ultimately went nowhere.

On the other hand, I have spent time in plants where metric ton quantities of phosgene were processed.

I spent many years working with phosgene, but the scariest substance I know well from direct experience is HF.

While I strongly support regulation in most cases, I have to say that I've seen regulations involved in handling HF that increased, rather than decreased the associated hazards. Regulations that are divorced from science, and they do exist, are a real problem.

Actually, even as I have a healthy respect for the hazards associated with HF, I actually believe that some processes involving its use might save humanity from itself.

[ProfessorGAC]

6. Agreed!

I investigated an incident of damage to coalescing filters (and instrumentation) in an environmental control system.
The raw material, (using HF as an alkylation catalyst) was not cleaned of organofluorides.
So, in the process under review, the extremely high electronegativity & extreme temperatures liberated HF into the diluent air.
The damage to the system was immense. After only 2 days of production.
The spun glass in the coalescing filters turned to mush.
Fortunately, after only 2 days and a lot of HF consumed by the damaged process, our numbers said worker exposure was very, very low, if any. Fortunately.
Nothing to be careless with.
BTW: the claim against the supplier was for $4 million, in around 1990. Expensive mistake by the supplier.

[NNadir]

7. Speaking of alkylation...

...when I was a kid I used to bicycle ocassionally past the ExxonMobil refinery on Crenshaw Blvd in Torrance in the LA basin.

That plant at one time handled ton quantities of HF.

One of the fun things about Crenshaw Blvd is its proximity to the Inglewood Newport fault. There was, I think, a Bophal in there that thankfully never happened.

The fossil fuel industry is dangerous in normal operations but the potential for accidents make it much much worse although such accidents when they happen go right down the memory hole.

[ProfessorGAC]

8. There's An E-M Refinery About 10 Miles From Us

They refit HF handling 10-12 years ago. It's now a big bank of cylinders instead of one big bottle. It's covered with a metal roof, and a shower system keeps the outer shells cool in summer.
There's also a deluge/fogger system to mitigate releases.
The release size went down 95% with that new system.
With it's proximity to home, and my lab/office being only a couple miles away, I was glad for that redesign.