Richard J. Daley Center, Chicago
CHICAGO — A chemical company with a manufacturing plant in north suburban Gurnee has agreed to pay to settle hundreds more lawsuits claiming emissions from its manufacturing process caused people living nearby in Lake County to develop cancer.
On Aug. 4, attorneys representing hundreds of plaintiffs asked a Cook County Circuit Court judge to sign off on the settlement involving more than 400 lawsuits against Vantage Specialty Chemicals Inc.
The plaintiffs were represented by attorneys from the firms of Edelson P.C., of Chicago; Dovel & Luner, of Santa Monica, California; and Stinar Gould Grieco & Hensley, of Chicago.
All of the lawsuits sought to make the company pay for its alleged release of ethylene oxide (EtO) gas into the air over decades of operations in Lake County.
Public versions of documents filed in court in support of the settlement intentionally have redacted, or blacked out, the amount Vantage will pay, with permission from Cook County Judge Kathy Flanagan, to hide the dollar amount from the public.
In court filings, the plaintiffs' attorneys say the amount is none of the public's business, as "disclosing it would not serve a public purpose as such information is generally unavailable to the public."
Vantage is a privately owned corporation and does not discuss its revenue publicly in government filing or reports to investors.
The apparent completion of the new Vantage settlement comes a little less than a year since the company earlier agreed to also pay an undisclosed sum to settle 440 cases in September 2025. Altogether, the settlements would cover more than 840 lawsuits.
The settlement is also the latest to land in a years-long campaign of lawsuits targeting a host of some of Lake County's largest manufacturers and employers over alleged harms from emissions of EtO.
Since 2019, thousands of lawsuits have been filed in Cook County court against Lake County companies.
All of the lawsuits centered on claims that EtO emissions from facilities in Lake County had caused people living and working nearby to develop cancer. Those lawsuits, in turn, had followed swiftly on the heels of headline-grabbing claims against Stergenics, a medical device sterilization company which operated a plant in west suburban Willowbrook in Cook County.
In addition to Vanatage, companies targeted in the Lake County litigation in the past seven years have included medical device companies Steris Isomedix and Medline; pharmaceutical companies Abbott Laboratories, Baxter Healthcare and Abbvie Inc.; and manufacturers BASF Corporation and PPG Industries.
EtO is used widely in various industries, including many in the Chicago area. In manufacturing, EtO serves as a key chemical building block ingredient for a wide range of products, including antifreeze, recyclable packaging and nearly all products containing fiberglass. Derivatives of EtO are also used to make shampoo and other personal care items, as well as some pharmaceuticals.
According to its site, Vantage's Gurnee factory produces a variety of chemicals used in nearly all of those industries.
EtO has also been widely used by companies like Steris, Sterigenics and Medline to sterilize a wide variety of medical devices and tools, including surgical implants like pacemakers and catheters, as well as surgical instruments.
Medical device makers have said EtO is all but essential to ensuring patient safety and preventing deadly infections in patients undergoing surgeries in operating rooms.
Because of its widespread use, EtO is present in the ambient air throughout much of the Chicago region, according to air pollution measurements conducted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Companies in the Chicago area and elsewhere, however, have been targeted in recent years by lawsuits from trial lawyers seeking big payouts and relying on government reports indicating long exposure to EtO could increase people's risk of contracting cancer.
In Illinois, the anti-EtO effort began when activists and trial lawyers targeted sterilization company Sterigenics, which operated a sterilization plant in west suburban Willowbrook.
The activists succeeded in persuading state officials to take action against Sterigenics and rewrite Illinois' pollution rules to impose severe limits on EtO emissions, ultimately forcing Sterigenics to pull out of Illinois, even though the company had to that point never violated state or federal EtO emissions limits.
Sterigenics ultimately agreed to pay $408 million to settle more than 870 lawsuits on behalf of people who lived in and around Willowbrook.
Nationally, EtO-related actions have resulted in settlements estimated to be worth at least $725 million collectively, according to some published estimates. Those estimates are likely conservative, as a number of companies, like Vantage, have opted to settle confidentially.
Others who have settled in Lake County EtO litigation include:
- Steris Isomedix, who publicly disclosed a settlement worth $48 million;
- Medline, which indicated in a 2025 federal regulatory filing that it had paid at least $166 million to settle 380 cases; and
- Baxter Healthcare, which agreed to settle 38 lawsuits. The company acknowledged the settlement in revenue reports, but indicated the amount was "not material."
The largest of those settlements came as part of proceedings to conclude the initial wave of hundreds of Lake County EtO lawsuits. However, as they neared completion of those initial deals, the plaintiffs moved to expand their lawsuits further, targeting additional companies.
That maneuver followed the playbook set in the litigation against Sterigenics, where plaintiffs' lawyers added additional defendant, Griffith Foods, to the litigation.
Beginning in late 2024, the Edelson attorneys lodged hundreds of suits against a group of additional defendants, including Baxter, AbbVie, Abbott Laboratories, PPG Industries and BASF Corporation.
Those defendants, excluding Baxter, have pushed back against those lawsuits, claiming the plaintiffs either waited far too long to sue them or engaged in other unfair procedural tactics to tee up the lawsuits.
Vantage is represented in the action by attorneys from the firm of Kirkland & Ellis, of Chicago.
