TL;DR:
For 35 years, Griffith Foods International and its successor Sterigenics emitted the toxic chemical ethylene oxide into the air of Willowbrook, Illinois, exposing thousands of residents to carcinogenic pollution. The emissions (authorized by a state permit that lacked firm limits)a caused widespread cancer and disease. Internal knowledge of the risks, combined with permissive regulation and a profit-driven corporate model, enabled a slow-motion public health catastrophe.
What follows is the story of how corporate and regulatory systems alike failed to protect a community… and how the insurance industry became a final battleground for accountability.
(Continue reading for the full investigation into the misconduct, systemic failures, and broader implications under neoliberal capitalism.)
Inside the Allegations: Corporate Misconduct
Between 1984 and 2019, a sterilization facility in Willowbrook released large volumes of ethylene oxide (EtO) (a known carcinogen) into the surrounding air. The operation began under Griffith Foods, which sought and received a permit from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) despite acknowledging that its process would emit dangerous levels of EtO. The agency expressed concern but imposed no emission limits. When Sterigenics purchased the plant in 1999, it continued emissions for another two decades until regulators finally intervened.
The court documents describe more than 800 lawsuits filed by residents, alleging cancers and other illnesses caused by continuous EtO exposure. Plaintiffs claim the companies knowingly placed the facility in a residential area near homes and schools, despite clear evidence that emissions were hazardous.
Timeline of Events
| Year | Event | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Early 1900s | Griffith Foods pioneers use of ethylene oxide | Company begins using EtO as sterilant for medical supplies. |
| 1984 | IEPA grants operating permit | Griffith receives permission to operate Willowbrook plant; no emission limits imposed. |
| 1984–1999 | Continuous emissions under Griffith Foods | Large amounts of EtO released into nearby residential areas. |
| 1999 | Sterigenics purchases facility | Operations continue with same emissions profile. |
| 2018 | Federal report reveals “staggering” cancer rates | U.S. Department of Health and Human Services links elevated cancer to EtO exposure. |
| 2019 | IEPA imposes emission limits and plant shuts down | Regulatory action finally halts decades of pollution. |
| 2021 | Insurance dispute begins | Griffith demands that insurer defend against lawsuits; National Union refuses, citing pollution exclusion. |
For decades, residents unknowingly inhaled the chemical daily. The health impacts were severe and widespread, creating what residents and advocates describe as a preventable environmental tragedy enabled by corporate indifference and regulatory leniency.
Regulatory Capture and Loopholes
The case reveals the structural weaknesses of environmental oversight in the neoliberal era. The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, while aware of the projected emissions, issued Griffith a permit without specifying an upper limit on toxic output. This bureaucratic omission effectively legalized continuous exposure for nearby residents.
Permits meant to protect the public instead insulated corporations from liability. The absence of strict quantitative caps allowed Griffith and later Sterigenics to claim compliance while emitting carcinogens at industrial levels. The lack of monitoring or enforcement transformed the regulatory process into a shield for corporate misconduct.
This dynamic illustrates a classic form of regulatory capture. Where agencies designed to protect citizens end up serving industry interests. The IEPA’s decision to approve and renew permits despite known risks exemplifies how neoliberal deregulation shifts responsibility from public institutions to market actors, assuming corporations will self-regulate. The Willowbrook disaster proves how misplaced that faith can be.
Profit-Maximization at All Costs
Ethylene oxide sterilization was profitable. It offered efficiency and cost savings, particularly for the medical supply industry. Griffith’s decision to operate in a densely populated area reduced transportation costs and ensured proximity to labor and logistics hubs. These economic benefits came at the expense of public health.
Documents show that the company continued its emissions for decades, even as scientific understanding of EtO’s toxicity deepened. Profit motives overrode precaution. When Sterigenics inherited the plant, it maintained the same model, prioritizing continuity of revenue streams rather than public safety.
In capitalist markets, the drive for profit rewards firms that minimize compliance costs and externalize risk. Here, that incentive structure translated into emissions that were lawful on paper but lethal in practice. By the time regulators intervened, hundreds of residents had developed cancers linked to chronic exposure.
The Economic Fallout
The fallout has been both financial and social. Willowbrook became a symbol of environmental negligence, and property values declined amid national headlines about cancer clusters. Families faced medical bankruptcy while state and local governments bore the costs of health interventions, testing, and environmental monitoring.
Griffith and Sterigenics faced hundreds of lawsuits. The insurance battle with National Union Fire Insurance Company added another layer of complexity. The companies sought coverage for legal defense costs under commercial general liability (CGL) policies, but the insurer refused, citing a “pollution exclusion” clause. At stake were roughly $150 million in defense costs.
This dispute underscores a broader systemic issue: when corporations shift risk onto insurers, and insurers resist payment, the burden ultimately falls on victims and taxpayers. The system produces endless litigation instead of accountability.
Environmental and Public Health Risks
Ethylene oxide is one of the most potent carcinogens regulated under U.S. law. Continuous exposure even at low levels increases the risk of breast cancer, lymphoma, and other diseases. In Willowbrook, emissions persisted for 35 years. The resulting contamination was invisible and odorless, making detection nearly impossible without specialized testing.
The health consequences are detailed in the Master Complaint, which describes a community breathing in toxic air without knowledge or consent. Residents reported decades of unexplained illness, miscarriages, and cancer clusters. The tragedy was cumulative. An accumulation of invisible harm magnified by corporate inaction and regulatory neglect!
Exploitation of Workers
While the legal record focuses primarily on community harm, the underlying industrial system also endangered workers. Plant employees were exposed daily to EtO concentrations far above safe thresholds. The logic of production efficiency demanded continuous operations, leaving little room for protective measures or adequate ventilation. In this way, labor itself became another expendable input in a profit-maximizing model that sacrificed human safety for throughput.
Community Impact: Local Lives Undermined
The Willowbrook community became collateral damage in an industrial process rationalized as “necessary” for commerce. Schools, homes, and playgrounds sat downwind of the plant. Parents unknowingly sent children into air thick with invisible carcinogens. Generations grew up in a poisoned environment created by private decisions and public inaction.
Residents’ lives were disrupted not only by illness but also by the long shadow of uncertainty. Even after the plant’s closure in 2019, the stigma of contamination remained. The environmental and emotional costs continue to outlast the facility itself.
The PR Machine: Corporate Spin Tactics
Throughout the controversy, both Griffith and Sterigenics publicly maintained compliance with environmental laws. The permit became their central talking point; proof, in their view, of regulatory approval. This strategy reflects a broader corporate playbook: use legality as legitimacy.
By focusing on the existence of permits rather than the consequences of emissions, the companies deflected moral accountability. Their messaging mirrored the language of bureaucratic compliance, insisting that permitted pollution could not be considered wrongdoing. This is how evil corporations turn paperwork into moral armor. Transforming harm into a technicality.
Wealth Disparity and Corporate Greed
The case reveals the moral asymmetry between corporate wealth and community vulnerability. While Griffith and Sterigenics operated profitably, residents bore the hidden costs of disease and environmental degradation. The distribution of risk followed class and geographic lines; corporate earnings accumulated in distant boardrooms while cancers multiplied in working-class neighborhoods.
This pattern exemplifies neoliberal capitalism’s central contradiction: private enrichment through public endangerment. In systems governed by deregulation, wealth buys impunity. Profit and harm are two sides of the same ledger.
Global Parallels: A Pattern of Predation
Similar stories have unfolded worldwide! Factories in India releasing toxic gas, refineries in Louisiana poisoning Black communities, and chemical plants across Asia and Africa operating with minimal oversight.
I have many such articles on this website about those very stories!
Each case follows the same pattern: deregulated markets, captured regulators, and externalized human costs. The Willowbrook case is not an exception. It is a symptom of a global order that prioritizes capital accumulation over collective well-being.
Corporate Accountability Fails the Public
Even after decades of pollution, the companies faced no criminal liability. The legal battle instead centered on insurance coverage. It’s on whether an evil corporation’s defense costs should be paid, not whether victims should be compensated. This inversion of justice illustrates how corporate accountability erodes under neoliberalism.
Executives remained insulated by layers of corporate structure, insurance contracts, and legal ambiguity. The victims faced uncertainty and delay. The system functioned as designed: to minimize corporate exposure, not human suffering.
Legal Minimalism: Doing Just Enough to Stay Plausibly Legal
Griffith and Sterigenics operated under the letter of the law but against its spirit. Their emissions were technically “permitted,” but that permission existed only because the regulatory framework failed to set meaningful limits. In neoliberal economies, legality often becomes the lowest bar for legitimacy. Compliance becomes a branding exercise rather than a moral commitment.
The pollution exclusion clause in the insurance policies mirrors this logic. It defines responsibility narrowly, protecting insurers and corporations alike through language designed to minimize liability. Legal minimalism is not a flaw in the system; it is the system’s core operating principle.
How Capitalism Exploits Delay: The Strategic Use of Time
Time became another corporate weapon. The emissions continued for decades, the litigation stretched for years, and the insurance disputes remain unresolved. Delay benefits corporations because each year of inaction diminishes public attention and depletes victims’ resources. Under capitalism, harm is not only monetized but also deferred.
Remember kids, justice postponed becomes justice denied.
The Language of Legitimacy: How Courts Frame Harm
Court opinions describe decades of toxic exposure in technical language. Technical words like “pollutant discharges,” “policy exclusions,” “authorized emissions.” Such phrasing strips moral weight from the reality of cancer and death. The judiciary’s reliance on sanitized terminology reflects a broader tendency of neoliberal institutions to translate suffering into bureaucratic abstraction.
This linguistic neutralization allows systemic violence to appear as procedural normalcy. It is the language of legitimacy, designed to protect markets from moral scrutiny.
This Is the System Working as Intended
The Willowbrook disaster was not an accident.
Rather, it was the predictable outcome of a system that rewards cost-cutting, tolerates regulatory weakness, and values profit over life. The emissions were authorized, the harms foreseeable, and the accountability deferred. Each institution (the corporation, the regulator, the insurer, and the court) performed exactly as neoliberal capitalism expects: protecting capital, not communities.
Conclusion
The Willowbrook case stands as a monument to the moral bankruptcy of a system that treats pollution as a business cost and illness as collateral damage. For decades, a quiet suburb inhaled the byproducts of industrial greed under the guise of legality. The courts now debate not whether people were harmed, but who should pay for the defense.
When law, policy, and profit align against the public, justice becomes procedural theater. The lesson from Willowbrook is clear: the system did not fail. It succeeded in producing precisely the inequality, harm, and impunity that neoliberal capitalism was built to sustain.
Frivolous or Serious Lawsuit?
This lawsuit is serious and deeply grounded in factual harm. It reflects genuine legal grievances based on decades of community exposure to carcinogenic emissions. The documentation of cancer rates, emissions history, and regulatory complicity supports a meaningful claim.
đź’ˇ Explore Corporate Misconduct by Category
Corporations harm people every day — from wage theft to pollution. Learn more by exploring key areas of injustice.
- 💀 Product Safety Violations — When companies risk lives for profit.
- 🌿 Environmental Violations — Pollution, ecological collapse, and unchecked greed.
- 💼 Labor Exploitation — Wage theft, worker abuse, and unsafe conditions.
- 🛡️ Data Breaches & Privacy Abuses — Misuse and mishandling of personal information.
- 💵 Financial Fraud & Corruption — Lies, scams, and executive impunity.
