Suing the administration to stop cancer-causing air pollution
Every weekday morning in the small Georgia town of Madison, busy parents hurry their kids into a cheerful daycare just outside downtown. Just a mile away, down a quiet road off the bypass, sits an unremarkable industrial building with two plain chimneys rising from its roof.
It doesn’t look threatening. But inside, the facility sterilizes medical equipment using ethylene oxide — a colorless gas that new scientific evidence shows is 60 times more carcinogenic than previously understood.
These sterilizer sites may be smaller than coal plants or sprawling petrochemical complexes, but they are far from harmless. Each pumps a toxic, invisible chemical into the air — one that puts surrounding communities at significantly greater risk of cancer.
This past July, the Trump administration granted “presidential exemptions” for 40 facilities that emit this cancer-causing pollution to put off complying with the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2024 protections under the Clean Air Act for an additional two years.
The Madison, Georgia facility is one of them.
No one voted for dirty air. Be part of the fight ahead.
The result: children, who are more susceptible to the effects of this toxic gas, and the rest of our communities are forced to wait even longer for safeguards that would reduce elevated cancer risks from this industry by up to 92%.
Today, we filed suit against the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency in federal court to stop this unlawful move and protect the health of families across the South and beyond.
No one voted for dirty air, and these protections cannot be delayed. Not for families whose children attend daycares like the one in Madison, or the millions of people who live, work, shop or worship near facilities emitting this dangerous pollutant.
These communities have waited long enough for clean air. The law is clear, the science is clear, and the technology to control this dangerous pollution exists today. We’re going to court to ensure these protections are not delayed.
Irena Como, SELC Senior Attorney
What is ethylene oxide, or EtO?
Ethylene oxide, or EtO, is a cancer-causing chemical derived from fossil fuels and is widely used to sterilize medical equipment.
Long-term exposure to EtO increases the risk of several cancers, including:
- Lymphoma
- Myeloma
- Leukemia
- Breast cancer
Children, whose bodies are still developing, are even more susceptible to the toxic effects of this chemical.
An estimated 8.5 million people live close to a facility that emits ethylene oxide.
Because of the unremarkable nature of these facilities, which are often sited in residential areas, and the fact that EtO is colorless and has a sweet smell only at very high concentrations, many people living, working, shopping, or simply going about their daily lives near these facilities have no idea they are being exposed to it.
New science, new protections
For years, the people living near these facilities, also known as “fenceline communities,” raised alarms about the health risks of EtO. In 2024, new scientific research confirmed what many feared: ethylene oxide is far more carcinogenic than previously recognized.
In response, the EPA issued the 2024 Ethylene Oxide Sterilizer Rule, finally closing dangerous loopholes and putting modern safeguards in place.
The rule would:
- Set stronger limits on emissions based on updated health risks
- Require pollution-control technologies that are already widely available and in use
- Regulate previously uncontrolled sources
- Reduce EtO pollution nationwide by 90%
- Lower the number of people facing elevated cancer risks from this industry by approximately 92%
There are already facilities across the country that are meeting these standards due to state laws. And critically, the timeline for implementation of these protections accounted for any potential disruption to the supply of sterilized medical equipment.
A sudden reversal
In July 2025, the Trump administration announced sweeping exemptions for 40 sterilizer facilities — including 10 in SELC’s region — allowing them to delay compliance with the new health protections for two more years.
This action was unprecedented. No president has ever used this exemption authority, yet President Trump has now invoked it nine times — not only for sterilizer facilities, but also for:
- Nearly one-third of U.S. coal-fired power plants
- Fifty chemical manufacturers
- A copper smelter
- The entire taconite iron-ore processing industry
“We all deserve clean air…”
Many of the affected sterilization facilities are located near neighborhoods, schools, and places of worship — often in communities of color and low-wealth areas that are already overburdened by industrial pollution.
In Charlotte, North Carolina, Daisha Wall, a member of the nonprofit CleanAire NC and its Director of Programs and Impact— our longtime partner and a client in this lawsuit — lives less than a mile from one of the facilities granted an exemption to pollute.
With a background in environmental policy and a career dedicated to clean air, Daisha knows these exemptions aren’t abstract policy choices — they are intentional decisions made by the federal government that put her family, and especially her two-year-old daughter, directly in harm’s way.
“I am concerned about the quality of the air my family breathes on a daily basis,” Daisha says. “My life happens in this neighborhood. I shop here. I work here. My daughter’s daycare is just 2.5 miles from a facility that is now allowed to continue releasing chemicals known to be especially dangerous for children. Across the country, families like mine are being forced to shoulder the risk of cancer-causing pollution so industry can avoid accountability. That is not acceptable. We all deserve clean air in our homes, in our neighborhoods, and for our children.”
These exemptions are illegal
Alongside the Natural Resources Defense Council and representing CleanAire NC, Virginia Interfaith Power & Light, and Sustainable Newton, a grassroots organization in Georgia, we’ve filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Trump administration’s EPA. These exemptions pose a direct threat to public health and are unlawful, here’s why:
- They ignore the Clean Air Act’s requirements: The President may only grant case-by-case, temporary exemptions after making a written determination that the available technology is not available and national security requires it. Instead, the administration issued blanket extensions with no individualized review, despite the fact that these pollution control technologies already exist and are widely used and required in several states.
Our communities need clean air now
Families in Madison and millions more across the country need clean, safe air now.
Instead, the Trump administration’s actions force our communities, which have already been exposed to ethylene oxide for too long, to live longer with elevated cancer risks that EPA has acknowledged and taken steps to reduce. We’re challenging these unlawful exemptions because no parent should have to wonder whether dropping their child off at daycare means exposing them to a carcinogen.