Andrea Thome Pens Blog About Sterigenics

WILLOWBROOK, IL — Andrea Thome, wife of former White Sox player Jim Thome, recently wrote a blog about the emissions of ethylene oxide from Willowbrook-based Sterigenics.

"We’ve been being poisoned by a company called Sterigenics, and it’s been happening without our knowledge since the mid-1980s," Thome writes on her blog. "Our cancer rates are disturbingly higher than the national average, but only in a several-mile radius surrounding this plant."

According to law firms representing clients in a law suit against Sterigenics, data from air samples taken by the EPA in 2018 show the Willowbrook census tract posts a cancer risk that is 64 times higher than the EPA's acceptable limits and is in the 99.9th percentile in terms of cancer risk in the country.

Thome also writes about how her mother, a Willowbrook resident, died in October 2014 after a battle with liver and kidney disease, despite not drinking or smoking, but she did like to have the windows open in her home.

Thome's father, also a Willowbrook resident, had a large brain tumor that nearly robbed him of his eyesight, according to her blog.

"The cause of his kind of tumor is largely unknown, but pardon me if I’ve stopped believing in coincidences at this stage of the game," she writes.

According to her blog, she is part of the community members who are organizing to remove Sterigenics from the community.

"We started with a petition, but there is so much more than that in the works to remove this toxic weed from our garden," she writes.

Image via Google Streetview.