On Monday, as Cobb County residents prepared to gather for another town hall to meet with both local and federal officials about issues related to ethylene oxide from the Sterigenics facility, City of Atlanta lawmakers were preparing to get in front of the issue.
Michael Smith, press secretary for the Atlanta mayor’s office, announced that the city council would be introducing legislation that would allow the city to enter into an intergovernmental (IGA) agreement with the City of Smyrna and Cobb County to conduct air testing, legislation that comes as a direct response to the Sterigenics leak.
Sterigenics’ Cobb factory lies less than a mile from Atlanta city limits, bordering the districts of city councilmen Dustin Hillis, who introduced the legislation, and J.P Matzigkeit, a co-sponsor. Said Hillis on the bill, which was approved Monday afternoon, “As a health professional, resident, and representative of the area, it is very important to me that we partner with our neighbors in Cobb County and Smyrna to commission this air testing and monitoring. I have been working closely with Mayor Bottoms’ executive leadership team, along with officials from our neighboring governments, to ensure that the city of Atlanta is included in the testing that will be conducted by GHD.”
Cobb officials earlier this month approved funds to hire GHD Services, Inc. to do testing and consulting. The IGA will allow for an expansion of that study, which will monitor concentration levels of ethylene oxide, a sterilization chemical that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has linked to cancer.
Steriginics has admitted that it has released thousands of pounds of the gas into the air over the years, but claims that it heavily reduced emissions starting in 2016, when the EPA released its study about the sterilization chemical being linked to cancer.
Over 1,000 Cobb and Fulton residents attended Monday’s town hall at the Cobb County Civic Center, where they held signs saying “Say No to ETO” and demanded answers from officials in attendance. Unfortunately, EPA officials didn’t have many answers, saying they needed to wait until further tests were complete to see just how much damage has been done, and just how much danger remains.
“The City wants to ensure that our communities have clean air,” said Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms Monday. “While there is no evidence our residents have been impacted, we must do our due diligence to ensure the well-being of our families.
