The recurring theme at a public hearing Thursday outlining planned improvements for a Waukegan facility that uses ethylene oxide was why a Willowbrook facility was shut down for using the cancer-causing gas but not one in Waukegan.
About 100 people — residents, local officials and legislators — gathered at Whittier Elementary School Thursday evening to express their frustration and learn about the new pollution controls being proposed for the Medline Industries facility on the city’s west side
The new changes would involve putting the entire building under negative pressure so that air cannot escape, and then running all the air through stepped-up pollution controls, Illinois Environmental Protection Agency spokesman Brad Frost said.
The facility’s emissions would also be capped at 150 pounds per year, far less than the thousands of pounds of gas the facility had previously being releasing into the community, Frost added. The air released through a proposed new 85-foot stack would be continuously monitored and those results reviewed by the IEPA.
That means if the planned controls don’t bring emissions below that “hard cap,” Medline will have to do more, according to Frost.
This set of controls is “unheard of” for this type of facility anywhere in the U.S. and are designed to bring risk levels “way below” the one-in-10,000 standard set by the U.S. EPA and closer to one in a million, Frost said.
According to the U.S. EPA, a cancer risk level of one in a million implies that “if 1 million people are exposed to the same concentration of a pollutant continuously (24 hours per day) over 70 years, (one) person would likely contract cancer from this exposure.”
Everything comes with risk, even walking outside, said Christopher Romaine, a construction permits manager for the Illinois EPA’s Bureau of Air.
“What I hear is you're minimizing, not eradicating, the health crisis that is upon our community,” Waukegan resident Diana Burdette said. “What you are telling us is that you are reducing the effects of a carcinogen and mutagen ... but not completely.
“We're still, as a community, supposed to put up with this danger until you have developed something that will perhaps eradicate it.”
Burdette was one of several speakers to ask the Illinois EPA representatives why the Medline Industries facility in Waukegan and the Vantage Specialty Chemicals plant in Gurnee have remained open while the Sterigenics facility in Willowbrook was shut down.
They noted that Waukegan is a minority-majority community and identified by the Illinois EPA as an area of environmental justice concern.
Frost said he could not comment on Sterigenics due to a pending lawsuit.
Multiple speakers also referenced the May 3 explosion at a Waukegan factory that killed four and the April 25 chemical spill in nearby Beach Park that sent nearly 40 people to the hospital as justification for their heightened alarm.
Christy Diaz, a Waukegan resident who lives near the Northpoint Boulevard Medline facility, said her family has considered moving from their home of 19 years because of the ethylene oxide issue.
Another Waukegan resident said it’s hard as the parent of a child who attends school near the Medline facility to hear the IEPA representatives talk about risk when she’d just rather not have to deal with it and have medical sterilization companies use another chemical.
Frost said the Illinois EPA does “take the issue very seriously,” which is why it is pushing for controls that go beyond what state and federal law require.
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Without a permit like the one being considered, the Illinois EPA cannot enforce the lower emission caps, he said.
Other regulatory agencies, not the IEPA, have authority over other items raised by residents Thursday evening, according to Frost, including whether another chemical sterilizer should be used instead of ethylene oxide; what support exists or should exist for those harmed by ethylene oxide exposure; and what safeguards exist around worker safety.
Medline plans to move forward with the improvements “immediately” after the IEPA issues its permits, said Lara Simmons, the company’s president of quality assurance and regulatory affairs. The work is expected to take 90 to 120 days.
The company will also need a variance from the city of Waukegan for the proposed stack, which would be 25 feet higher than what’s allowed under the city’s ordinances, Frost said.
Medline has not yet submitted an application for a variance, said Noelle Kischer-Lepper, the city’s the city's director of planning and economic development.
Discussions are also taking place with Vantage Specialty Chemicals about their Gurnee plant, Frost said. A community meeting will also take place on the plans for that facility.
“It takes time to evaluate and to come up with solutions,” Frost said. “I know it's not a great answer. People don't like to hear that it takes time, but it does take time to come up with solutions, to come up with what actually can work at a particular facility to get the emissions down.”