Sterigenics: Hinsdale District 86 Should Do the Right Thing

For those of us who have been impacted by Sterigenics’s pollution (the medical instrument sterilization company whose plants released ethylene oxide [EtO], a colorless gas and known carcinogen) located in Willowbrook, Illinois, it came as wonderful news when Sterigenics announced on September 30th, that it would be permanently closing its Willowbrook plants and leaving town, forever we hope, after polluting the surrounding area since 1984. Ironically enough, I happened to be receiving an infusion at my oncologist’s office that morning to treat my chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) which was caused by my EtO exposure during a 25-year teaching career at Hinsdale South High School, located a mile from the now defunct Sterigenics plants. My wife—the victim of two miscarriages, the premature birth and death of our daughter, and breast cancer (which can all be attributed to her twenty years at South breathing in EtO)—sat with me during the three-hour procedure. Needless to say, we’ve been supporters of the Stop Sterigenics movement and are very happy that this silent killer won’t be released into this area’s air any more.

Those who led the fight to stop this huge corporation with its significant political connections and high-priced law team deserve everyone’s appreciation and admiration. I’m especially proud that several of the grass-roots locals who assumed leadership in this movement were graduates of Hinsdale South, including a couple who were freshmen in my English classes at South many years ago. We all owe a huge debt to the Stop Sterigenics troops and can learn much about determination, community, and organization from this stalwart group.

And that leads to the mixed bag of outcomes that Sterigenics’s Willowbrook departure brings with it. On the one hand—and most importantly by far—there is now one less dangerous source of pollution which causes harm to human beings. Unfortunately, the long-term impacts of decades of exposure to a known carcinogen have yet to be addressed; or, in at least one case, they’ve been brushed aside as way too much effort for a “very limited return.” The Hinsdale Township High School District 86 school board has so far refused to address its responsibility to notify past employees of the health risks working at Hinsdale South High School from 1984 to January 2019 entailed.

Although those in the Willowbrook area can breath (literally) a sigh of relief at the departure of this deadly business enterprise, in the press release announcing their departure, Sterigenics plays the victim, stating that its products play a vital role in hospital safety (despite many alternatives to EtO which can be used for sterilization purposes with no ill effects). They also point to their record as exemplary in following all environmental guidelines and give no indication that leaving Willowbrook is due to anything other than the “unstable legislative and regulatory landscape in Illinois.” This defiant tone suggests that Sterigenics plans to continue using EtO in other places, at least until all the lawsuits its emissions have spawned are resolved. And that means anyone who cares about human health should be on guard for any Sterigenics plant near population centers.

There are other companies which are also using EtO, regardless of the risks. Medline and Vantage have hurt people in Lake County, Illinois, and Sterigenics still has over ten EtO plants operating in North America. In short, those opposed to EtO in Willowbrook will be called upon to assist others in their battles to make their air safe to breathe. Actually, the Stop Sterigenics group has already been active in exporting their activism skills to other parts of the country. Like ridding Willowbrook of this plague, it won’t be easy, but the experiences and skills developed here should transition readily to the rest of the United States. There’s no question that more effort will be required, but the Willowbrook effect should put in motion the elimination of this poison from our air. I’m not sure how long it will take, but I’m confident that EtO will join the ranks of DDT as one of those foolish inventions humans finally figured out was way too harmful to be used by anyone.

The rest of the “to-do” list related to the legacy of EtO will be harder to complete, especially now that Sterigenics and other EtO polluters are in retreat. Public awareness of the harm EtO can cause to those who have absorbed it into their systems remains a key issue that is not yet resolved. Every person who may have been harmed by EtO needs to understand what they were exposed to, what it could mean for their future health, how they can go about monitoring themselves to detect any damage as soon as possible, and what their rights are to hold Sterigenics and other polluters liable for any harm they may have caused. All those things are dependent on those impacted learning exactly what happened and having access to good information on how to proceed.

Notification processes, then, become crucial to the well-being of affected populations, but those populations come in many different groupings with varying degrees of difficulty in locating and informing. Again, using myself as an example, I never lived in the area which was polluted by Sterigenics in Willowbrook; I just happened to work at a high school close to the plant. I retired from Hinsdale South in 2012, some seven years before my health issues caused by Sterigenics came to light. I did stay in the area, however, so when the plant was closed this past January, just as I was getting my CLL diagnosis, local news helped me to put everything together to understand how I had come to have leukemia. But if I had relocated to another state upon my retirement, it’s unlikely that I would have been able to connect my illness to my time working at South by way of Sterigenics. The publicity which was so pervasive here might never have reached me had I moved away.

Of course, past employees who have moved away would be able to understand what had happened and which measures they should take if their past employers—who have now learned of EtO’s harm—would make the effort to reach out to them to provide them with the facts required to make informed decisions on healthcare, medical monitoring, and legal rights. Once those in charge know what has happened, it seems obvious that they would want to make sure that anyone who may have been impacted by EtO was notified about their exposure and where to go for information. Yet, in actual practice, the Hinsdale 86 school board rejected taking any action beyond posting a few links on its website. In other words, the board has provided a source of information but will not lift a finger to notify those victimized by the pollution in South that the information is there.

I know this because I participated in trying to get the board to begin a notification process. I emailed a board member (who also happened to be an ex-student of mine), wrote another essay which went over why this was necessary and how it might be accomplished, and appeared before the board on September 26 to ask them publicly to begin a notification process (if you’d like to hear my remarks, they begin at 0:7:05 of this video). Then, at the October 10th board meeting, a majority of the board rejected any further actions beside what had already been posted on the district web site after the superintendent requested direction on going forward with a notification process. (You can hear the five-minute discussion 1:35:15 into this video.) Those opposed had two main reasons for not notifying past employees: The notification might lead past employees to see the board as liable for the EtO pollution which could lead to suits against District 86, and the notification process would be too much effort for too little return.

To respond briefly to both those weak rationales, I suppose it is possible that somebody would see notification as grounds for a lawsuit, but the board members using this reasoning offered no evidence besides their own legal “expertise.” No one suggested tasking the lawyers the district has on retainer to look at this issue so the board would have a researched, documented legal opinion, which seems the least the board could do. Secondly, as long as we’re throwing educated guesses around about legal liability, I could point out that failure to notify those at risk would put the district at an even greater legal risk. Imagine ex-employees who discover two years from now—long after the possibility of participating in any of the on-going lawsuits has passed—that the cancer they had been treated for was actually the result of the EtO they breathed in while employed at South. Couldn’t those employees sue the district for NOT notifying them of their risks, especially given that the district clearly now knows of those risks and has received specific requests that it notify past employees of those risks? I don’t know the answer to that question, but neither do those board members who were speculating on other legal possibilities. The board should consult outside experts on these matters before accepting undocumented opinions generated on the spur of the moment.

The “very limited return for significant involvement” argument is unconscionable to me. Basically, the board members taking this position (who were four of the six at the October 10 meeting) are stating that trying to notify people who spent decades teaching the community’s children that they had been subjected to a cancer-causing substance for many years which could make them ill—as it has many of their colleagues—would be too much of a hassle, that the time of the human resources head and his staff is too valuable because they have more important things to do than working to help save past employees’ lives. To claim what has been done thus far (links listed on the district web site) is “above and beyond” what is morally required doesn’t come close to passing the ridicule test. I could list several approaches to tracking down ex-employees that would belie the argument that this would be too difficult to do, but that doesn’t matter in the least when we’re talking about the health of fellow humans. I’ve attended three funerals of my colleagues who died way too early due to cancers that have been linked to EtO; what price would those four board members state was too high to have lengthened or even saved their lives?

I can only hope that the spontaneous responses to the superintendent’s request for direction were not well thought out, but the implications of what was said is that these board members care more about the workload of the HR department than helping out sick and dying past employees. I’m sorry if my leukemia is inconvenient for you, but I sure as hell didn’t ask for it.

The least the school board can do, in my opinion, is to attempt everything it can to make sure as many past employees have all they information they need to do what’s in their best interests. It might not be something required by current laws, but morally there is no question whatsoever—past boards hired these people, taxpayers’ dollars were allocated for the care and maintenance of the building in which they worked, and it turns out that—even though nobody associated with the school district is to blame—harm was done to those employees because of that building’s condition. No, the board is not responsible for what happened because at the time, they had no knowledge of the danger in the school. But they know now.

That is not to imply that the Hinsdale 86 school board is the only organization which has a responsibility to notify those who worked in sick buildings what Sterigenics did. There are many other government-funded entities like schools, libraries, and post offices; to say nothing of dozens of private businesses within the danger zone of Sterigenics’s emissions for the past 35 years. Thus, there are thousands of people who have been impacted by having worked close to Sterigenics. How will all of them find out about their risks and rights unless their former employer reaches out to them? This is not an issue limited to the Hinsdale 86; that’s for certain. We need public policy which outlines procedures for the responsibilities organizations have for disseminating information to past/retired employees impacted by post-employment discoveries.

It shouldn’t take impacted retired employees like me to try to shame institutions, be they public or private, into doing the right thing by those who worked in their buildings. Here’s to the Hinsdale Township High School District 86 school board reconsidering its immoral decision regarding instituting a notification procedure so that those impacted by Sterigenics can get the information they need for proper health. Despite what some Hinsdale 86 board members would have you believe, it’s well worth the effort.