This story is co-reported by Brenda Goodman of WebMD and Andy Miller of Georgia Health News.
Editor's note: This story was updated on August 16, 2019, with additional details in regards to the state of Georgia's plans to conduct air testing for ethylene oxide.
August 14, 2019 – Several communities within the Atlanta area are moving forward with plans to check the air around two sterilization facilities resulting from public pressure and the danger of toxic pollutants being released in those areas.
The Cobb County Commission on Tuesday approved funding for independent testing across the Sterigenics plant in Smyrna, Georgia. The commission is awaiting a call from the Smyrna City Council and possibly the Atlanta City Council on whether they’ll share the price of the test, which is able to involve taking samples of ethylene oxide, in response to the Marietta Daily Newspaper.
And east of Atlanta, town of Covington, Georgia, says on its Facebook page that it’s “still evaluating potential air quality testing companies” because it plans to research its own air for ethylene oxide. The BD plant in Covington also uses the gas to sterilize medical products.
A city spokesman said Wednesday that town council is anticipated to approve the tests at a gathering on Monday.
According to the Ethylene Oxide Sterilization Association, ethylene oxide is utilized in about half of all medical devices that require sterilization. The chemical was classified as a carcinogen by the EPA in 2016.
On August 16, the Georgia Environmental Protection Agency (EPD) announced details of its plan to check the air around the facility plants. Over the following few months, air samples shall be collected every six days in Smyrna and Covington. Each community may have 4 monitoring stations situated between 1 / 4 mile and a mile from the facility plants. Equipment shall be delivered in the following few weeks and results are expected in November.
EPD announced the outcomes of an initial sample test for ethylene oxide at its monitoring station in south DeKalb County earlier this week. The agency said the test showed an ethylene oxide concentration of 0.309 micrograms per cubic meter of air at the positioning near Interstate 285 southeast of town of Atlanta.
In a report on the test results, the EPA, which analyzed the sample, points out that the sample results are only an estimate since the testing equipment couldn’t be properly calibrated.
Scientists who reviewed the report say the outcomes suggest the EPA detected ethylene oxide (also often known as EtO) within the air around Atlanta, but the precise amount of the chemical and possible sources are still unknown.
The detected value is roughly similar to the ethylene oxide levels measured by the EPA in Willowbrook, Illinois, within the six weeks following the closure of the Sterigenics plant there on February 15.
The experts interviewed in regards to the sample results disagree about their significance.
“It is very difficult to accurately measure such small amounts of chemicals in the air,” said Janet McCabe, former deputy director of the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation, in response to a matter in regards to the South DeKalb test.
“In this case, the device was apparently not checked (calibrated), so that the scientists are convinced that it [ethylene oxide] “They are not sure of the exact reading,” McCabe says in an email.
According to the EPD, there isn’t a known industrial source of ethylene oxide emissions inside 15 miles of the South DeKalb site – including the Sterigenics and BD facilities.
The medical sterilization industry has stressed that there are other sources of ethylene oxide, including diesel trucks and other vehicles.
Ethylene oxide disperses in the skin air, but doesn’t disappear for a very long time. The chemical has a half-life within the air of about 200 days, or almost 7 months. The half-life is the time it takes for under half of the chemical to decay.
The state's report on the ethylene oxide sample doesn’t include data on wind direction on the time of the sample.
In an email, Dr. Richard Peltier, associate professor of environmental health sciences on the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, said the outcomes were “not precise and not legally defensible, but are likely within a 10 to 15 percent tolerance of the actual value.”
“That would certainly be a cause for concern, as that level is 15 times higher than what the EPA considers safe.”
The problem of toxic air pollution in Georgia got here to light after WebMD and Georgia Health News released a report last month. The report said that last 12 months, the EPA identified 109 census tracts within the United States, including two within the Smyrna area, northwest of Atlanta, and one in Covington, about 35 miles east of Atlanta, which have an increased risk of cancer, primarily resulting from using ethylene oxide.
In the Smyrna and Covington areas, which first learned in regards to the ethylene oxide problem through the report, town hall meetings were recently held at which many residents called for air testing.
The Cobb Commission's approval of funding for testing “is an important first step,” said Democratic Senator Jen Jordan, who represents a part of Smyrna County. “I have every reason to believe that the city of Atlanta is also ready to sit down at the negotiating table. The Georgia EPD's failure to inform affected communities of the increased risk has delayed the process long enough. Now that the school year is starting, immediate action is urgently needed.”
In response to public pressure, the EPD revised its stance after telling journalists months ago that there have been no plans to check the air around sterilization facilities.
In addition to monitoring the air across the plants, EPD said this week it plans to conduct monitoring at a rural site to grasp differences between urban and rural concentrations.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson, who represents the Covington metropolitan area, has sent letters to the EPA and EPD demanding answers as to why his constituents weren’t informed in regards to the release of the chemical into the community's air.
The concentration of ethylene oxide in residential areas surrounding the Covington plant is between 17 and 97 times the allowable area concentration (AAC), Johnson said in a letter to EPA management on Monday.
“Despite knowing the significant danger ethylene oxide poses, the EPA appears to have failed to curb the release of the poison. In addition, the EPA has not issued press releases about these findings to inform residents of affected areas – and it has failed even to inform families and communities that the air they breathe may be toxic.”
The letter was also signed by U.S. Representatives David Scott and Lucy McBath, each Democrats from Georgia, and state Representatives Susan Wild (D-PA) and Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas).