Toronto — Residents of a city just outside Toronto tell CBS News they had no idea an American company was running a major facility near their homes that may be releasing a toxic gas into the air. 

The company says the facility is safe and in compliance with limits imposed by the Canadian government, but some Mississauga residents said they want to know why the Sterigenics plant was even allowed to open there, as the company has faced hundreds of lawsuits in the U.S. and on the heels of it shutting down another facility on the other side of Toronto that was found to be spewing far more of the toxic fumes than it should have been under government safety guidelines.

Sterigenics specializes in the sterilization of medical equipment for health facilities using a chemical that’s a known carcinogen, though it has told CBS News — without providing evidence — that it captures virtually all of the gas before it escapes its plants. 

The current facility in an industrial area of the bustling city of Mississauga has been operating for two years. It opened not long after Sterigenics shuttered its previous facility in a more densely populated Toronto neighborhood, where Canadian officials found it had released dangerously high levels of ethylene oxide gas (EtO or EO) into the environment. 

Now, residents and environmental groups say more must be done to ensure the plant in Mississauga isn’t committing the same violations, which they argue could put people’s health at risk.

Ethylene oxide risks and Sterigenics’ recent history

Sterigenics is a subsidiary of Ohio-based Sotera Health. It uses EtO to sterilize medical equipment that can’t be sterilized using heat, such as respirators. According to Sterigenics, EtO is widely used across North America due to its effectiveness in sterilizing heat-sensitive devices.

EtO is a colorless, highly reactive and highly flammable gas that is considered toxic by both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the corresponding Canadian government agency, Health Canada. Long-term exposure through inhalation, even at minimal levels, can pose significant health risks to humans. According to the federal government agency Environment Canada’s risk management strategy for EtO, “cancer is the main impact of ethylene oxide on human health.”

A study conducted by Environment Canada and published in 2023 found that the first Sterigenics facility, in the Toronto inner suburb of Scarborough, had at one point released levels of EtO — a known carcinogen — into the air at a concentration of 18 parts per billion, far exceeding the level set under the agency’s safety guidelines of one part per billion.  

No illnesses connected to emissions from the Scarborough plant have been reported yet. Despite the national agency’s air sampling results, Ontario regulators told CBS News the Scarborough plant had been in compliance with regulations before it closed in 2022.

The emissions were even higher there than the EtO levels detected at the company’s facility in Willowbrook, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, which has been at the center of hundreds of personal injury and death lawsuits, as reported several years ago by CBS Chicago.

Former Sterigenics workers told CBS News Chicago the company had covered up the extent of its emissions and operated secret facilities at the Willowbrook plant. The company denied all these allegations, but the state of Illinois ordered operations to halt at the facility in 2019, the year after the U.S. EPA said it had detected a “high concentration of EtO in the nearby air.”

Streigenics and its parent company agreed to pay $408 million in 2023 to settle more than 870 lawsuits related to the Willowbrook facility, though it said it had accepted the settlement to avoid spending the time and money that would have resulted from long court battles. Sterigenics has always denied any safety risks from the plant and it acknowledged to CBS News in June that there could be more lawsuits over the Willowbrook facility.

As recently as mid-May, six new personal injury lawsuits were filed against Sterigenics, alleging the company’s ethylene oxide emissions in Willowbrook had caused severe health effects including multiple cases of cancer, neurological disorder, respiratory problems and one death.

Sterigenics closed its plant in Scarborough, northeast Toronto, in 2022. It relocated to the new facility on the other side of Toronto, in Mississauga, within the year. The company has never explained the move.

Sterigenics says it safely uses a vital product

The potential risks posed to the Mississauga and Scarborough communities were first brought to light by an investigation carried out by The Local news outlet, in conjunction with The Narwhal, a non-profit online magazine covering urban health and social issues in Canada. 

In a statement emailed to CBS News, a Sterigenics spokesperson confirmed the company uses EtO at its Mississauga facility. The spokesperson said the plant sterilizes more than three million medical devices for Canadian hospitals every
month, including surgical kits and respirators. 

“Ethylene Oxide is the only sterilization method that satisfies FDA and Health Canada-approved sterility validations for many critical medical devices,” the spokesperson said. “The Sterigenics Toronto facility is one of a limited number of local sterilization options that can sterilize a wide variety of products for local Canadian customers.”

According to Environment Canada’s guidelines on EtO, facilities that use or purchase 10 kilograms (about 22 pounds) or more of the chemical annually should contain 99% of their emissions or ensure that the concentration of the chemical released into the atmosphere remains below one part per billion.

In the statement to CBS News, Sterigenics said its Mississauga facility is equipped with an emissions control system that surpasses regulatory requirements in Canada.

“These best-in-industry technologies will allow the new facility to capture and control over 99.9% of facility EO emissions, further enhancing our already safe operations,” said the spokesperson. CBS News could not independently verify Sterigenics’ statements about its emissions, and no government or private data are available to confirm the extent of its emissions in Mississauga.

For their investigation, the Canadian news outlets requested permission to tour the Mississauga facility, but said they were told by a company spokesperson that it was not possible due to a “commitment to confidentiality and security.”

Sterigenics’ neighbors voice shock and concern

The facility is located in a busy industrial area of Mississauga. A restaurant, wholesale food market and countless shops sit just a few blocks from the plant. There’s a busy branch of the Canadian restaurant chain Tim Hortons within 300 yards of the facility. 

Research published in 2023 by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in England noted a high risk of breast cancer in women living within a six mile radius of facilities emitting EtO. 

There are homes within three miles, to the north and southwest of the plant in Mississauga. CBS News spoke with several residents who live within that radius, and none said they were aware of the facility’s activities or history.

“I’m surprised that this kind of facility would be permitted in this area. It’s shocking,” Jim Ben, who lives less than three miles from the Mississauga plant, told CBS News. “I will contact the city and my MPP (member of Provincial Parliament) and see what they have to say about it.”

More than 1,000 people gather to pray every Friday at the Jami Masjid mosque, just three miles from the Stergenics facility. 

“Obviously we’re concerned,” Kamal Syed, a member of the mosque’s management team, told CBS News. “We’ve been here for a long time and we have a lot of people coming here, including women, children, and pregnant women.”

“I think this is more of a systemic or process issue that needs to be looked at,” he said, calling for “better regulation by the province or the city to have some type of impact assessment done when companies like this are moving to an area, and then understanding potential risks to the community.” 

“It’s about the whole community, and I think the way we have to do this is we have to hold our government officials accountable and pressure them to take action on this.”

“Environmental racism”?

Environmental Defence, a Canadian environmental advocacy group that collaborates with industry, government and individuals to protect communities, has said it is concerned that officials prioritize speed in issuing permits over public information and feedback in some areas, especially those with large immigrant populations.

Karen Wirsig, a senior program manager at Environmental Defence, told CBS News that while the organization had not studied Sterigenics’ work specifically, its research on another industrial facility in Ontario led the group to conclude that many local residents had no idea a decades-old waste burning facility “existed or had proposed a massive expansion.”

“The environmental permitting process at the provincial level prioritizes expediency for companies seeking permits over communities understanding the proposals and the potential impacts on their health and the environment,” Wirsig told CBS News. “It also does not provide an opportunity to look at cumulative effects of pollution.”

CBS News has seen no evidence to suggest the permitting process for Sterigenics’ facilities in Ontario was rushed. 

We asked the provincial Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks (MECP) whether air safety tests had been carried out to verify that any EtO emissions from the Mississauga plant were within the safety guidelines. 

The MECP told CBS News in a statement that the Sterigenics plant was registered on the province’s Environmental Activity and Sector Registry in late May 2020 and that, “like all businesses registered on the EASR, Sterigenics was required to first assess its emissions by hiring a licenced engineering professional to prepare an Emission Summary and Dispersion Modelling report. The report indicates that emissions from Sterigenics’ Mississauga facility meet Ontario’s air standards for ethylene oxide.”

Wirsig said her group believes provincial regulators do prioritize speed, and that, combined with  a lack of evaluation of the cumulative effects of air pollution, this was leaving heavily-immigrant communities particularly vulnerable, as many residents work multiple jobs and lack language proficiency.

Wirsig said Environmental Defence had concluded that Ontario’s Peel district, which includes Mississauga and the city of Brampton, where the waste facility that her group looked into is located, “is a hotspot for environmental racism.”

A spokesperson for the region’s public health agency told CBS News that “advancing health equity is one of Peel Public Health’s strategic priorities, and we work with our community in understanding and addressing health inequities, including environmental health.” 

“While we understand and share the local area community’s concern about ensuring that health is not impacted by ethylene oxide exposure, this falls under the mandate of the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks.”

“It needs to be scrutinized more”

Experts cited by The Narwhal investigation said Health Canada’s guidelines are not enforceable regulations. Testing for EtO in the environment is a technical and expensive process, and CBS News’ queries to provincial and federal Canadian authorities, including the MECP, show that no air testing has ever been carried out around the Mississauga Sterigenics plant to ensure those guidelines are being adhered to.

“The only way that we’ve seen that quality control happens at the facility level, is if somebody points out that there’s an error,” Fe de Leon, a researcher and paralegal at the Canadian Environmental Law Association and a member of the National Pollutant Release Inventory working group, told The Narwhal. “Unless somebody points it out, it doesn’t get captured.” 

“It needs to be scrutinized more,” she added. 

CBS News contacted the province of Ontario, as well as the federal government agencies Health Canada and Environment Canada, for comment on Sterigenics’ regulatory requirements and any environmental screening that has been carried out. All of the agencies referred back to the MECP.

In a follow-up statement, the MECP told CBS News it had conducted an inspection of the facility in July 2022, “to assess compliance with Ontario’s environmental legislation,” which “included a physical site visit and review of documentation.” 

There was no indication that the agency’s inspection included any environmental air sampling. It said its full investigation report was available through a freedom of information request. CBS News has filed a request to see the report.