COVINGTON, Ga. — Air monitoring will take place in Covington after an ethylene-oxide using plant there revealed is has emitted tons of the cancer-causing gas into the air.
The plant told the state Friday it will suspend some of its operations there for two weeks, after the company revealed the emissions to state regulators.
A BD plant that sterilizes medical equipment is about a mile away from the warehouse. That plant shut down for a week this fall because of ethylene oxide leaks.
The nearby BD warehouse, which BD calls its Global Distribution Center, stores and ships products sterilized with ethylene oxide.
BD told state regulators that air monitors recently recorded that the warehouse emitted an average of .65 pounds of ethylene oxide per hour. That’s 15.6 pounds per day or 5694 pounds per year.
BD also revealed to state regulators it is operating another 40,000 ft/2 warehouse nearby. Friday, state regulators told BD that its failure to previously reveal the existence of the second Covington warehouse was a violation of a consent order agreed to between EPD and BD in Newton County Superior Court.
EPD ordered BD to remove all its product from the second warehouse by December 23. You can read the December 20 letter from EPD to BD here.
Both warehouses are near a school, a day care, and several neighborhoods.
"I really don’t feel like myself or my neighbors are really being protected from what we’re breathing. Which is scary," said Kallie Ingram, whose five year old daughter Arria has spent much of her life getting treatment for mysterious life-threatening tumors. Ingram is convinced ethylene oxide is the cause, and says she has retained an attorney to sue the company.
The state told the company it will require BD to monitor the air at the fence line outside of the warehouse – as well as Ingram’s subdivision – and the nearest school. The monitoring will determine airborne levels of ethylene oxide.
BD will also design and install new air pollution control equipment at the warehouse.
BD issued a statement earlier this week saying “air monitoring data from inside and outside the facility confirm that BD’s facility is safe for employees and the community” and that it will keep working to reduce ethylene oxide emissions." The entire statement is below.
Ingram thinks that’s not enough.
"If they were really concerned with it, I feel like they would have already shut down," Ingram said.
BD Statement on Global Distribution Center
BD is reviewing the notice from Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) to reduce fugitive ethylene oxide (EtO) emissions at our Global Distribution Center (GDC) in Covington, Ga. and will respond on or before the Dec. 20 deadline. Air monitoring data from inside and outside the facility confirm that BD’s facility is safe for employees and the community. Average EtO levels inside the facility are about 65% below the permissible exposure limits set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which is the regulatory authority for EtO levels inside business facilities. BD also conducts ongoing employee monitoring through our industrial hygiene program at the GDC, which also confirms there are no exposures above OSHA permissible exposure levels. External air monitoring data have also confirmed that EtO levels in the ambient air outside of the GDC is in line with “background” EtO levels found by both Georgia EPD and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) at air monitoring sites in Georgia and across the country where there are no industrial sources of EtO. This confirms the products stored at the GDC are not meaningfully contributing to higher levels of EtO than what is found in ambient air across the U.S. In addition, laboratory testing has also confirmed BD products are in compliance with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) standards for residual EtO levels that ensure patient and health care worker safety.
Throughout the course of the past year, BD has acted transparently and collaboratively with local and state officials to innovate and identify new methods to voluntarily further reduce emissions from its facilities in Georgia. While air monitoring data and analyses from board-certified toxicology experts have confirmed that all of BD’s facilities are operating in a manner that is safe for employees and the community, BD has committed to invest more than $8 million to further reduce EtO emissions as evidenced by the judicial consent order dated Oct. 28, 2019. BD will continue to work collaboratively with state and federal officials to propose and implement new ways to further reduce fugitive emissions from its facilities in Georgia.
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