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June 17, 2020 Media contact: Hannah Goering hgoering@lakecountyil.gov (847) 377-8099
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Ethylene Oxide Air Monitoring Program Concludes
Health Department sends results to federal and state agencies
Lake County, Ill. — The Lake County Health Department, Village of Gurnee, and City of Waukegan have received the final set of results from the last phase of outdoor air monitoring for ethylene oxide (EtO) near Vantage Specialty Chemicals in Gurnee and Medline Industries in Waukegan.
The third phase of outdoor air monitoring in Lake County began April 4, 2020. Samples were collected from 12 sites every third day during a 30-day period, which ended on May 2, 2020. The three phases of air monitoring were conducted over 120 days, with samples collected on 54 separate days between June of 2019 and May of 2020. A total of 606 samples were collected throughout the program, with an additional 54 samples collected by Medline and Vantage.
The results are available to the public via the Health Department’s website, www.lakecountyil.gov/eto.
Now that the outdoor air monitoring program has concluded, the complete results have been forwarded to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) for further analysis, and to the Illinois EPA which has regulatory authority over EtO emissions permitting in Illinois.
The ATSDR has agreed to conduct a health risk assessment for Lake County based on the results, and Illinois Department of Public Health has agreed to complete a cancer incidence study that includes Lake County. These analyses are expected to take several months.
For more details on EtO in Lake County, visit the Health Department’s website, www.lakecountyil.gov/eto.
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