5 Companies Sued for Violating Prop. 65 : Air pollution: State Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp alleges that the firms--two of them in Orange County--failed to adequately warn residents near their plants that they emit a cancer-causing chemical.

The state attorney general sued five companies in Orange and Los Angeles counties Wednesday, alleging that they failed to adequately warn an estimated 3 million people that their plants emit a cancer-causing chemical.

The lawsuits are the most sweeping allegations against companies so far stemming from Proposition 65, the groundbreaking anti-toxics measure overwhelmingly approved by voters in 1986. The law requires companies to give reasonable and adequate warnings to the public when they release pollutants known to cause cancer or birth defects.

The lawsuits filed by Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp target Baxter Bentley Laboratories in Irvine, the Baxter Pharmaseal division of Baxter Healthcare Corp. in Irwindale, Sterilization Services in Anaheim, Griffith Micro Science in Vernon and Botanicals International in Long Beach. The companies own a total of nine plants in the five cities.

The chemical involved is ethylene oxide, a colorless, odorless gas used widely by the pharmaceutical and food-packaging industries to sterilize equipment. Exposure to the toxic gas increases the risks of leukemia and stomach cancer and also has been linked to birth defects, state and federal health officials say.

Van de Kamp alleges that the companies give insufficient warnings to nearby residents and that the ethylene oxide emitted into the neighborhoods around the plants is as much as 100 times greater than the amount deemed safe under Proposition 65.

Officials from Baxter Healthcare, which owns the Irvine and Irwindale plants, said they plan to stop using the chemical in California and instead will sterilize medical equipment in other facilities, probably in Puerto Rico. The Irvine company makes oxygenators, devices that serve as artificial lungs during open-heart surgery.

“Bentley Laboratories has been reducing its emissions in Irvine for some years now. By the end of the year, we won’t use ethylene oxide there at all,” said Geoffrey Fenton, a spokesman for the Deerfield, Ill., company.

Fenton said Proposition 65 gives companies only a vaguely worded requirement to warn residents of emissions.

“We have done community and employee warnings. We have posted signs, and we also have an internal campaign to warn workers. We also publish quarterly ads in newspapers,” he said. “We feel it is adequate, but there is room for interpretation under Proposition 65.”

Van de Kamp said he hopes that the lawsuits send a message to companies exposing communities to toxics that an occasional newspaper ad or bulletin board announcement “is not enough under Proposition 65.”

The proposition requires “reasonable” public notice--an effort Van de Kamp said should include radio and television campaigns when such large exposures occur.

In the suits, filed in Los Angeles and Orange County superior courts, he is seeking unspecified civil penalties, alleging violations of not only Proposition 65 but also the state’s air-quality nuisance code.

The five companies release about 295,000 pounds of the toxic gas into the air each year, according to a May report by the California Air Resources Board. They are five of the largest sources of such emissions in the state.

Business leaders said Wednesday that the litigation could have sweeping effects on all industries in California. Thousands of companies that use more than 200 toxic chemicals might be forced to step up efforts to warn the public of the risks in order to avoid similar lawsuits.

Like the five companies targeted by Van de Kamp, most industries--including the state’s major oil and aerospace companies--attempt to comply with Proposition 65 by posting signs and placing newspaper advertisements several times a year.

“There’s going to be a spinoff,” said Timothy Landis, chairman of the environmental council of the Orange County Chamber of Commerce. “Other companies will be calling their attorneys right away to see what they should do.”

Landis said most industrial plants will probably have to start posting large signs on their front door or fence.

“It could be very serious if you have to put it right on your door, where customers and employees walk in,” he said. “It won’t cost companies a lot, but what if the workers see the sign and decide to quit? Companies also may have to change their manufacturing processes.”

In all, about 800,000 pounds of ethylene oxide are emitted into the air annually by 650 companies in California, mostly hospitals and manufacturers of medical products, the report by the Air Resources Board says.

That amount of the chemical carries a risk of causing from 360 to 510 cancer cases in California over a 70-year period, the report estimates. About 75% of the companies are in Orange and Los Angeles counties.

California air-quality officials already have acted to reduce the threat posed by ethylene oxide.

In May, the Air Resources Board adopted a regulation that forces California industries to virtually eliminate the fumes over time. Within two years, all companies that use the chemical must cut an average of 98% of the dangerous gases. The largest companies, including the five sued by Van de Kamp, must cut the emissions by 99.9% within 1 1/2 years.

Some business leaders complained Wednesday that the estimated cost of $15 million per year to comply by installing pollution-control equipment will hurt the medical sterilization industry.

Baxter Bentley Laboratories is one of the largest sources of toxic air emissions in Orange County, according to reports filed with the federal Environmental Protection Agency. In addition to ethylene oxide, it releases large amounts of chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which destroy the ozone layer.

Fenton said the company has goals of reducing all emissions and wastes--including an 80% cutback in CFCs by 1996.

He said that ethylene oxide is needed because the company knows of no substitute for sterilizing medical devices but that the company is working to consolidate its use of the chemical.

“We’re making a product that is essential in saving human lives,” he said.

State health officials said no studies have been done to see if excess cancers show up in the neighborhoods around the plants.

However, Van de Kamp said, if someone did get cancer who “lived within striking distance of these emitting sources, how could you ever trace it back to the source?” Such uncertainties make “immediate action” by the companies imperative, he said.

Lindsay Wagner, a 35-year-old mother of two who lives within a few blocks of the Irwindale plant, said Baxter Healthcare “does a poor job of informing the community what’s going on as far as chemicals are concerned, and I am worried about the safety of my family.”

Proposition 65 says a safe limit for the chemical is 2 micrograms per day over an individual’s lifetime, said Deputy Atty. Gen. Edward Weil. When people are exposed beyond that level, he said, “you get into the significant risk area” of one death per 100,000 people.

Van de Kamp said Griffith Micro Science in Vernon has exposed nearly 2 million people to concentrations of the chemical that are 104 times more than the limits set by Proposition 65.

Officials of Griffith Micro Science, based in Illinois, could not be reached for comment.

Van de Kamp said that emissions data, obtained from reports the company filed with the EPA, show that Botanicals International in Long Beach is exposing about 550,000 people to levels 41 times higher than those deemed safe.

Botanicals International officials did not return phone calls from The Times.

Officials at Sterilization Services in Anaheim and its headquarters in Illinois also did not return phone calls.

Van de Kamp said the lawsuits are the beginning of a far wider campaign to put public pressure on toxic emitters within California’s vast industrial complex.

Staff writers Jill Stewart and Ron Smith contributed to this report from Los Angeles.