Warning: Public Health Announcement
Today Trump’s EPA moved to roll back limits on ethylene oxide emissions from medical device sterilization plants a cancer-causing gas that’s also essential to keeping those devices safe to use.
Here’s the bind the same chemical that sterilizes pacemakers and syringes has been linked to leukemia and other cancers in workers and residents living near the facilities that use it.
And a lot of residents. Over 14.2 million people live within five miles of one of these plants (the rough danger zone) and a 2023 study found cancer risk in those communities runs nearly three times the national average.
Here’s the thing though protecting those communities and keeping medical devices sterile aren’t mutually exclusive. It just costs corporations more money.
A 2024 rule finally closed the loopholes, required continuous monitoring, and was on track to cut EtO emissions by 90% by 2027. The previous limits dated back to 1994 and had left a massive gap unaddressed for 30 years including “fugitive emissions,” gas leaking from rooms and vents inside facilities that nobody was even tracking. Trump’s EPA is now throwing all of that out.
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