Tejeda-Rios is not the only one experiencing disbelief about Willowbrook’s toxic burden. Knowing that there was an explanation for their suffering, that a chemical floating in their air has been wreaking havoc on each of their bodies, brought a strange form of validation along with anger - and shock. “It was always the same - ‘it’s a fluke, we don’t know why this is going on,’” said Tejeda-Rios. The many doctors her family has seen over the past few years had been unable to explain their litany of health complaints. And one of her 9-year-old daughter’s classmates at the local elementary school was recently diagnosed with leukemia, as was Tejeda-Rios’s next-door neighbor, an otherwise healthy man in his early 50s. Her 12-year-old daughter has often coughed to the point of vomiting and has developed a bone cyst. Both of her children, who have lived in the house for most of their lives, have had respiratory problems since they were little. She has found it difficult to read through briefs, and almost instantly forgets movie plots and even some conversations. Since she moved to the house in 2009, Tejeda-Rios has suffered from intense headaches, dizziness, nausea, inability to concentrate, and memory loss. “It was like reading our medical history,” said Tejeda-Rios, an immigration lawyer who lives with her husband, two children, and mother just a half block from the plant. When Gabriela Tejeda-Rios saw the list of health problems, a sickening wave of recognition washed over her. The chemical has been shown to cause reproductive problems, respiratory tract irritation, headaches, memory loss, and certain cancers, including leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and breast cancer. ![]() ![]() ![]() The primary culprit was a chemical called ethylene oxide, a colorless gas emanating from a local plant owned by a company called Sterigenics. According to the EPA’s most recent National Air Toxics Assessment, released in August, the residents of seven census tracts in the Chicago suburb and the surrounding area in DuPage County have a risk of developing cancer from air pollution that’s greater than 100 per million people, compared with the national average of 32 per million. In Willowbrook, Illinois, an affluent suburb southwest of Chicago, residents were understandably horrified when they learned that they faced an elevated risk of cancer due to air pollution.
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