Federal officials have known about the dangers of ethylene oxide since the late 1970s.
But decades of pushback by chemical companies and governments sympathetic to deregulation have repeatedly stalled efforts to protect the public from the cancer-causing gas used to manufacture chemicals and sterilize medical equipment, pharmaceutical drugs and food.
According to a Chicago Tribune analysis of data quietly released in August by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, nearly 2 million Americans live in communities where ethylene oxide is responsible for the majority of their long-term cancer risks from breathing toxic air pollution — including the two Chicago suburbs of Willowbrook and Waukegan.
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