For 35 years, the Sterigenics plant in Willowbrook released ethylene oxide, a known human carcinogen, into a DuPage County neighborhood where roughly 19,000 people lived within a mile and children attended four nearby schools. When federal health officials revealed the danger in August 2018, the community fought back, and Collins Law Group fought alongside it. The Sterigenics Willowbrook fight ended with the plant permanently closed, a record $363 million jury verdict for a single plaintiff, a $408 million settlement resolving more than 870 claims, and a national EPA crackdown on ethylene oxide emissions. This is the full story, told in one place.
Ethylene oxide (EtO) is a colorless, flammable gas used to sterilize medical equipment that cannot withstand heat or steam. Sterilization is legitimate and necessary work. The problem was where and how it was done. Beginning in 1984, Sterigenics operated a commercial sterilization facility at Midway Drive and Quincy Street in Willowbrook, in the middle of a residential community, releasing EtO into the surrounding air for decades.
The science on EtO was not a mystery. The National Toxicology Program has listed ethylene oxide as a known human carcinogen since 2000, and in 2016 the U.S. EPA's updated risk assessment concluded the chemical was far more dangerous than previously understood, linking inhalation exposure to breast cancer, leukemia, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and multiple myeloma. Neighbors were never warned.
In August 2018, the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), working from EPA air-toxics data, identified an elevated cancer risk for people living near the Willowbrook facility, in the worst estimates thousands of times higher per million residents than the level EPA considers acceptable. Residents learned from news reports, not from Sterigenics and not from regulators, that they had been breathing a carcinogen for decades.
What followed was one of the most effective community environmental campaigns in Illinois history. Residents packed village meetings and Illinois EPA hearings. Grassroots groups organized. Our firm publicly demanded answers from the EPA and Sterigenics within days of the ATSDR findings and kept the pressure on in the months that followed.
The turning point came on February 15, 2019, when the Illinois EPA issued a Seal Order shutting down the facility after air testing showed dangerous EtO levels in the surrounding community, including near schools. Federal air monitoring conducted from late 2018 into 2019 showed EtO levels in the area dropped after operations ceased, pointing squarely at the plant as the source.
Illinois lawmakers responded in June 2019 with the Matt Haller Act, named for a Willowbrook resident and Sterigenics critic who died of cancer, imposing some of the nation's strictest limits on ethylene oxide sterilization. When the Illinois EPA nonetheless granted Sterigenics a permit that fall that could have allowed the plant to reopen, hundreds of residents objected, and our partner Shawn Collins publicly condemned the decision. Sterigenics announced on September 30, 2019 that it would not reopen the Willowbrook facility. It has never operated there again.
Closing the plant did not help the families already living with cancer. In August 2019, Collins Law Group filed its first wave of lawsuits in the Circuit Court of Cook County on behalf of residents with breast cancer, leukemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma, including a young woman who had battled leukemia and recurrent cancers since childhood and a group of former Hinsdale South High School teachers. The suits alleged that Sterigenics knew its emissions endangered its neighbors and kept operating anyway.
In September 2022, the first Sterigenics case reached trial. Our firm, with co-counsel, represented plaintiff Sue Kamuda, who had lived about a third of a mile from the plant for decades before developing breast cancer. On September 19, 2022, a Cook County jury awarded her $363 million, comprised of $38 million in compensatory damages and $325 million in punitive damages. It was the first ethylene oxide verdict in the country and remains the largest verdict for a single plaintiff in Illinois history.
One reason an Illinois jury could deliver full justice: Illinois places no caps on compensatory damages in personal injury and wrongful death cases, economic or non-economic. In Lebron v. Gottlieb Memorial Hospital, 237 Ill. 2d 217 (2010), the Illinois Supreme Court struck down statutory caps on noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases, holding that the cap "violates the separation of powers clause" and "effects an unconstitutional legislative remittitur."
Months after the Kamuda verdict, on January 9, 2023, Sterigenics and its parent company agreed to pay $408 million to resolve more than 870 pending ethylene oxide claims in Cook County and federal court. Shawn Collins helped lead the negotiation of that settlement on behalf of the plaintiffs. Every case is different, and past results do not guarantee future outcomes.
The Willowbrook fight reached far beyond DuPage County. On March 14, 2024, the U.S. EPA finalized amendments to its Clean Air Act standards for commercial sterilizers, projected to cut ethylene oxide emissions from those facilities nationwide by more than 90 percent. Regulators, courts, and companies across the country now treat EtO emissions as the serious cancer risk that Willowbrook's residents proved them to be.
The lesson of Willowbrook is not only about one chemical or one company. Industrial facilities operate near homes and schools throughout Chicagoland, and the people living nearby are usually the last to learn what is in their air, water, or soil. Willowbrook showed that ordinary families, armed with public health data, persistent advocacy, and experienced trial counsel, can shut down a polluter and hold it accountable in court.
If your community is facing possible contamination from an industrial neighbor, whether airborne emissions, groundwater pollution, or toxic chemical exposure, the record matters: what the company knew, when regulators were told, and what the health data shows. Our environmental attorneys have spent decades building exactly those cases.
No. The Illinois EPA sealed the facility in February 2019, and Sterigenics announced on September 30, 2019 that it would not reopen the Willowbrook plant. It has not operated there since.
The first trial ended on September 19, 2022 with a $363 million Cook County jury verdict for plaintiff Sue Kamuda, the largest single-plaintiff verdict in Illinois history. In January 2023, Sterigenics agreed to a $408 million settlement resolving more than 870 claims brought by people who lived, worked, or attended school near the plant.
Health agencies have linked ethylene oxide inhalation to breast cancer, leukemia, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and multiple myeloma. The EPA's 2016 risk assessment concluded EtO was substantially more carcinogenic than earlier estimates had assumed.
Illinois adopted strict limits on EtO sterilization in 2019 under the Matt Haller Act, and the EPA's March 2024 national rule requires commercial sterilizers to cut emissions by more than 90 percent. The risk is far lower than it was, but families near industrial facilities of any kind should stay alert to what those facilities emit.
Collins Law Group's environmental practice has recovered some of the largest environmental verdicts and settlements in Illinois history on behalf of contaminated communities. If you believe an industrial facility has polluted your neighborhood's air, water, or soil, we will review your situation for free, and you pay nothing unless we win. Call (630) 527-1595 or contact us online.
John D. Risvold is an equity partner at Collins Law Group, P.C. in Naperville, Illinois. He represents individuals and families in catastrophic personal injury and wrongful death cases, focusing on commercial trucking crashes, rideshare and autonomous vehicle litigation, medical malpractice and birth injury, and product defect claims. He has tried cases to verdict in Illinois courts, recovered more than $50 million for clients over thirteen years of practice, and has been named to Best Lawyers in America for Personal Injury Litigation and Illinois Super Lawyers.
This article recounts the history of the Sterigenics Willowbrook litigation for informational purposes and is not legal advice. Every case is different, and past results do not guarantee future outcomes.
