“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 said in a statement.
In 2016, the EPA updated its assessment of ethylene oxide’s danger 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.
In 2022, the EPA laid out the risk faced by residents who live near medical sterilization facilities. In Laredo, Texas, for example, residents and activists fought to clean up a sterilization facility run by Missouri-based Midwest Sterilization Corp. It was one of 23 sterilizers in the United States that the EPA said posed a risk for people nearby.
Scott Whitaker, president and CEO of the Advanced Medical Technology Association, said medical sterilizers provide a vital service and many devices “cannot be sterilized by another method.” He said the EPA’s risk assessment overstates the threat employees face and undervalues the protections they are already provided.
“The EPA is full of really smart, diligent, nonaligned scientists,” she said. “If anything, the EPA is sometimes not protective enough.”
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