The EPA proposed banning the use of the chemical ethylene oxide, discovering a higher-than-expected cancer risk at factories. That use it to sterilize billions of medical equipment each year.
EPA claims that by targeting 86 medical sterilization plants around the country. It will reduce ethylene oxide emissions by nearly 80%. Companies will also be required to test for the antibacterial chemical in the air. To ensure that their pollution controls are functioning properly.
“The EPA’s top priority is to protect people’s health and safety,” said EPA Administrator Michael Regan in a statement. According to him, the agency’s suggestions “would significantly reduce worker. And community exposure to harmful levels of ethylene oxide.”
Darya Minovi, senior research analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists, says the action was “almost a decade overdue”. That it should have gone further to demand monitoring at facility fence lines. So residents know what is entering their neighbourhoods.
“I’m relieved and pleased that the EPA has finally issued proposed standards that are based on their own scientists’ recommendations on an updated. Higher cancer risk value,” Minovi says in a statement.
Ethylene oxide’s threat is severe
The tightened safeguards are driven by the EPA’s better understanding that ethylene oxide’s threat is severe. The chemical is classified as a pesticide. A worker in a medical sterilizing plant, over the course of a career, could see their risk shoot up by as much as one extra case of cancer for every 10 people exposed. The EPA’s generally acceptable increase in lifetime cancer risk is 1 in 10,000.
Ethylene oxide is a gas used to sterilize roughly half of all medical devices. It is also used to ensure the safety of certain spices and other food products. It is used to clean everything from catheters to syringes, pacemakers and plastic surgical gowns. Brief exposure isn’t considered a danger, but breathing it long term elevates the risk of breast cancer and lymphoma, according to the agency.
In 2016, the EPA updated its assessment of ethylene oxide’s danger and causes cancer. Based on information about exposed workers at sterilizing facilities. Finding the chemical was many times more threatening than previously known. Analysis released by the agency two years later found that cancer risk was too high near some medical sterilization plants and some other facilities that release ethylene oxide.