Toxic gas above federal EPA risk level around closed Cobb plant – By Meris Lutz (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) / Dec 30 2019
Limited air testing near a closed medical sterilization plant in Cobb County found elevated levels of ethylene oxide, a carcinogenic gas that has caused public protests and town hall meetings around facilities that use the gas.
The readings in Cobb were more than 10 times above the threshold federal regulators say poses long-term elevated cancer risk.
The test results were, however, largely in line with higher-than-expected background levels of ethylene oxide found across the country, and probably did not represent emissions from Cobb’s Sterigenics plant, experts said.
“I very much doubt that the values seen in these measurements are anything other than a background measurement,” Barry Ryan, an environmental exposure expert at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health, wrote in an email. “[T]he concentrations noted near operating facilities tend to be higher than these values.”
Ryan’s conclusions were echoed by Kyle Steenland, an epidemiologist at Emory who authored an influential study linking ethylene oxide to cancer.
Continue to article: https://www.ajc.com/news/local/toxic-gas-above-federal-epa-risk-level-around-closed-cobb-plant/P0Rpmnzq2Ivbzl7j20Xq3M/
