Think Money Will Protect You From Pollution? Welcome To Wealthy Hinsdale, IL, Awash In Carcinogen

[hatrack]

My son took his first breath in a place I never imagined would be potentially harmful for his health: Hinsdale, Illinois. Hinsdale is listed in the top 1% of the wealthiest towns in Illinois. It’s filled with multimillion-dollar mansions, Zook architectural masterpieces and upscale shops. But Hinsdale, despite its privileged position in Chicago’s western suburbs, has one unfortunate thing against it: like any other American town, it’s part of a country whose environmental and political leaders have decided that the environment is worth compromising for private profit.

Somehow, many of the privileged among us, including myself, didn’t think the unfortunate choices of our political leaders could have the power to kill us. They might hurt the poor in Flint, Michigan, the migrant workers in Bakersfield, California, or those who don’t have the means to leave Louisiana’s Cancer Alley. But most of us living in Hinsdale and its neighboring well-to-do towns never considered that our villages could be a Flint or Cancer Alley.

We were naive. Last year we learned that Sterigenics, a global medical sterilization company with a plant in Willowbrook, Illinois, quietly spewed insane amounts of ethylene oxide (EtO), a powerful carcinogen, into our air for 35 years. But that’s not the worst of it. When the news of this poisoning finally broke – and we realized that Sterigenics had brought our community a long-term cancer risk 10 times higher than federal EPA standards, possibly the second highest rate of cancer in the US – we stupidly assumed something would be done about it immediately.

This was wishful thinking. Nothing was done. So enraged residents formed Stop Sterigenics, a group that is now is over 10,000 members strong. We staged protests, packed town hall meetings, signed witness slips and called for Illinois politicians to shut down the company for the sake of public health. But progress was slow – because, unbelievable as it may sound, Sterigenics was operating legally. The Chicago Tribune quoted the then governor, Bruce Rauner, who claimed: “This is not an emergency. My understanding is that particular company has followed all the regulations and the proper procedures.” (Maybe it wasn’t an emergency to Mr Rauner since his old investment firm co-owned Sterigenics.)


EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/23/hinsdale-illinois-pollution-sterigenics-epa

[Cartoonist]

1. Republican country

Remember Henry Hyde?