A Sandy medical supply company is listed as one of 200 industrial plants in the country that release enough toxic chemicals to pose a serious cancer risk.
Deseret Medical-Becton Dickinson, 9450 S. State, Sandy, is on the list of plants that have emitted suspected cancer-causing chemicals, although other firms in the state are listed on another tally as releasing toxic air pollutants.The cancer-risk assessment is based on a lifetime of exposure to the maximum concentration of the suspected carcinogenic chemical that is released into the atmosphere. In this case, it's ethylene oxide, a sterilizing agent used to protect the medical supplies that the company manufactures.
Burnell Cordner, director of the Utah Bureau Air Quality, said the levels released by Deseret Medical should not pose an immediate health risk. However, there is a possibility of risk over a long-term exposure, he said.
Cordner said the latest inventory available shows that Deseret Medical released 10.73 tons of ethylene oxide in 1986.
Jim Tobin, vice president of Becton Dickinson, Deseret Medical's parent company in Franklin Lake, N.J., said Thursday, "We have state-of-the-art pollution-control equipment which removes virtually all of the ETO before it is emitted from the stack."
The company is in compliance with the regulations, he said.
"Deseret Medical makes all of these little medical supplies that you get in hospitals, and they're all sealed in plastic bags," Cordner said. Just before the bag is sealed, it is purged with ethylene oxide to sterilize the supplies.
Environmental Protection Agency officials contend that uncertainties in exposure rates make it unlikely that the risk is any greater than estimated, and raise the possibility that it could be much lower.
The list was prepared by the EPA and released by Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif. It is the second such list to be issued; the first named companies suspected of releasing toxic chemicals into the air.
On the first list were the Amax Magnesium Corp. plant in Tooele County, which released 69 million pounds of chlorine into the atmosphere in 1987, and the Hercules Bacchus Works in Salt Lake County, which released 875,900 pounds of methylene chloride.
Deseret Medical was listed as posing a risk of at least 1 in 1,000 but less than a risk of 1 in 100, representing the maximum possible cancer risk that might arise from inhaling a particular pollutant at maximum concentrations over a 70-year lifetime.
It doesn't represent the risk of the entire population in the plant's vicinity, because not everybody would have the same exposure.
"Deseret Medical has an approval order with us that limits and controls the amount they can emit," Cordner said. However, he said state officials are concerned because ethylene oxide is a toxic chemical not yet regulated.
"We're trying to find out what's emitted where, and in what quantities" throughout the state, he said. To that end, regulators have sent out questionnaires to be filled out by thousands of plants across the country.
Much of the information in the list was provided by the plants themselves, according to the EPA.
Cordner said Amax is a "much, much larger source" of toxic chemicals.