A Carson company that sterilizes medical devices has received 18 citations and civil penalties totaling $838,800 for failing to protect employees from overexposure to the cancer-causing chemical ethylene oxide, state officials announced Tuesday, March 21.
A half-dozen of the citations issued to Parter Sterilization Services are for willful and intentional violations, according to the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health.
“Our inspection showed this was not an isolated incident of chemical overexposure to workers,” Cal/OSHA Chief Jeff Killip said in a statement. “The employer failed to take action to protect employees even after it knew that some of them were exposed to dangerous levels of ethylene oxide.”
Parter officials did not return a phone call seeking comment.
Chronic exposure to ethylene oxide is associated with cancer, reproductive effects and neurotoxicity resulting in damage to the brain or peripheral nervous system. Its odor is undetectable to humans until its concentration exceeds hazardous levels.
More than half of the medical equipment in the United States, or approximately 20 billion devices, is sterilized with ethylene oxide because of the chemical’s ability to penetrate plastics and other materials to destroy bacteria without melting or weakening the device.
The toxicity of ethylene oxide has been debated nationally for decades, but federal regulators have moved at a glacial pace to restrict its use. A draft assessment from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2006 determined the chemical was significantly more carcinogenic than previously believed, according to ProPublica. Yet, the final assessment wasn’t published until a decade later.
Cal/OSHA’s Process Safety Management Unit, which is responsible for inspecting refineries and chemical plants that handle large quantities of toxic and flammable materials, inspected the Parter facility in August 2022 following an investigation by the South Coast Air…
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