Through a payment of $35 million, Sterigenics, a business under Sotera Health that manufactures sterilization solutions for medical devices, has settled 79 lawsuits brought against it over the last few years that claim the company’s sterilization plant in Smyrna, Georgia has risked the health of nearby residents with the release of carcinogenic ethylene oxide emissions.

In more than 100 suits filed against Sterigenics and BD Bard, which has a sterilization plant in nearby Covington, residents say the companies’ EO emissions are connected to illnesses in adults and children, including cancer and intellectual and physical birth defects, and have devalued their properties, according to 11Alive News/WXIA-TV.

The settlement, made on October 16, also applies to a case that was scheduled to go to trial on October 23. In a statement, Sterigenics denied any liability and said that while it was confident that a trial would have ultimately ended in its favor, it felt “resolving that case together with the other 78 claims being pursued by the same plaintiff's lawyers” was in its best interest and those of other stakeholders.

“The term sheet explicitly provides that the settlement is not to be construed as an admission of any liability or that emissions from Sterigenics’ Atlanta facility have ever posed any safety hazard to the surrounding communities," it said.

The FDA says that EO is essential for sterilizing medical equipment, as mentioned by Sterigenics in a lawsuit against Cobb County for imposing regulations related to its EO emissions. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has listed it as a carcinogenic chemical and found in a 2018 report that most areas in the U.S. with potentially elevated cancer risks contained high EO levels.

Sterigencis has performed EO operations at the facility since being certified by Cobb County in 1984, according to a countersuit it filed against plaintiffs in 2020. Attorneys representing the Cobb County residents say that because of this, property values have sunk by 10% in large part.

Previously, the company lost a similar case in Illinois filed by a woman who said EO emissions from the company’s industrial plant gave her breast cancer. The woman was awarded $363 million. Another woman there also sued the company following her cancer diagnosis but lost. Sterigenics still faces hundreds of suits there, as of November 2022, according to CBS News Chicago.

Cobb County still faces open lawsuits, which it “intends to vigorously defend,” said the company. Should a pool of personal injury claims go through a Phase I proceeding in October 2024 and a Phase 2 proceeding in August 2025, a trial will take place in September or October 2025, reported 11Alive News/WXIA-TV.

A separate set of cases around the property devaluation will continue through the discovery process through July 2024 and has no trial date set yet.

The settlement process is expected to be completed within 45 to 60 days.

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