Sterilization Services of Virginia last year received a presidential exemption from EPA rules that would have required the company to update its equipment and use a continuous emissions monitoring system. In April, a faulty valve on the roof of its facility in Henrico County emitted more than 500 pounds of carcinogenic ethylene oxide. Residents say they weren’t notified of the release.
America is quickly becoming an excellent playground for rich people to test their ideas thanks to loose laws.
They already have “intellectuals” writing the theories for crazy shit to try, as well as the justifications for it, too.
See The Sovereign Individual and the scribblings of Curtis Yarvin/Mencius Moldbug for example.
Or The Unhumans, which seems to think everything bad is caused by communism.
This has been a huge issue for Richmond for years now. They use ethylene oxide has to sterilize medical tools, though the rest of the world does it with safer gasses now. Even without an accident, it’s releasing cancerous gas on the regular
The scary part is that they have to let the tools off-gas over time, so they load them into trucks and drive them to undisclosed warehouses in the state. With no monitoring.
So the problem is bigger than just a one time leak. We don’t even know how big.
