The study found that emissions of colorless carcinogenic gas from sterilizing medical equipment pose a risk to more than 14 million Americans living within a five-mile radius of such emissions sources. Meanwhile, commercial sterilizers are often located in buildings that are quite unlike industrial or scientific facilities, and many people are not even aware that they live or work near a potential source of hazardous pollution, The Hill reported.
This is especially true of commercial sterilizers.
“Commercial sterilizers often just look like big warehouses. They don’t have big chimneys, and it’s not clear what exactly is going on inside such a facility, and because ethylene oxide is, of course, a colorless gas, you may not even know it’s being released there,” Daria Minovi, who supervised the work on the report, explained in an interview with The Hill.
So people often don’t even know they live in the neighborhood, the expert said. She said the problem is exacerbated by the fact that many emissions are so-called uncontrolled emissions, which are produced unintentionally by leaking valves or equipment failures.
“There are six or seven other types of facilities that also emit ethylene oxide that still need to have their standards updated,” Minovi stressed in an interview with The Hill. In addition to commercial sterilizers, she said, such hazardous facilities include hospital sterilizers of medical equipment, as well as various organic chemical plants located in the United States.