Toxic Utah: Firms take pains to avoid polluter list
Sandy company spends millions to clean the air
"For businesses, it is typically the kind of list you don't want to be on," said Cal Alexander, vice president of operations for Becton-Dickinson, which makes medical devices at its Sandy plant.
Becton-Dickinson's Sandy plant has tried to avoid the list by changing the chemicals it uses from those that harm the environment to those that are less damaging. For instance, the company no longer releases ethylene oxide, a cancer-causing chemical used to sterilize the medical devices. Now, the company contracts for the sterilization process with a New Mexico firm that has state-of-the-art pollution-control equipment that captures most of the ethylene oxide gas before it is released into the atmosphere.
"We did not just ship the problem to New Mexico," Alexander insists. Instead, the New Mexico company offered a cleaner alternative.
"We chose the high road," he said. "We are a medical company. We think of ourselves as a company that helps people. We like to be thought of as a clean industry."
"We're getting real close," Alexander said. In 1993, the company replaced dangerous, solvent-like Freon used as a lubricant on medical equipment with a chemical that is less harmful. And by 2002, the company will switch to an even cleaner substitute that doesn't have near the impact on ozone depletion.
"Industry, in general, is struggling to find substitute chemicals that work as well," Alexander said.
The company has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to reduce its pollution, and it has paid off environmentally. The Sandy plant is among the top 10 companies in North America with an environmental certification. "We were the first medical device company in North America to achieve it," Alexander said. "It is our measure of social responsibility to reduce our waste."
But a host of other Utah companies are still struggling.
Two make the list every year and are at or near the top of the nation's worst polluters. Magnesium Corp. of America emits more air pollution — chlorine mostly — than any other company in America.
And Kennecott makes the list because of releases of 33.9 million pounds of various toxic materials — mostly natural byproducts of copper mining — to the air, land and water.
Since 1987, the Environmental Protection Agency has required all manufacturing companies that emit pollutants to submit annual reports totaling the amount and type of emissions. In 1997, the types of industries required to report were expanded to include mining companies and power plants.
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