SHC - SOTERA ALERT: Bragar Eagel & Squire P.C. is Investigating Sotera Health Co. on Behalf of Long-Term Stockholders and Encourages Investors to Contact the Firm | Benzinga
NEW YORK, Nov. 13, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C., a nationally recognized shareholder rights law firm, is investigating potential claims against Sotera Health Co. (NASDAQ:SHC) on behalf of long-term stockholders following a class action complaint that was filed against Sotera on January 24, 2023 with a Class Period pursuant to the November 20, 2020 IPO; pursuant to the March 18, 2021 SPO; and/or between November 20, 2020 and September 19, 2022. Our investigation concerns whether the board of directors of Sotera have breached their fiduciary duties to the company.
Sotera provides sterilization and lab testing and advisory services to the medical device and pharmaceutical industries. The Company operates through three businesses: Sterigenics, Nordion, and Nelson Labs. Through its Sterigenics brand, which accounts for the majority of Sotera's annual revenues, Sotera provides outsourced terminal sterilization services for the medical device and pharmaceutical markets. Terminal sterilization is the process of sterilizing a product in its final packaging.
The Company's sterilization services rely on three primary technologies, one of which is Ethylene Oxide ("EtO") processing. EtO processing is a gas sterilization process in which pallets of packaged goods are loaded into a chamber that is then injected with EtO gas to penetrate the packaging. That process emits toxic fumes which must be filtered before being released into the air. Sotera, through its Sterigenics business, conducts or has conducted EtO processing at facilities located in Illinois, California, Georgia, and New Mexico.
In August 2006, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (the "EPA") published an assessment concluding that EtO was significantly more likely to cause cancer than previously known.
In December 2016, the EPA reclassified EtO as a chemical known to be carcinogenic to humans and increased its estimate of EtO's cancer potency by a multiple of thirty. The EPA has concluded that EtO exposure affects the most vulnerable members of the population, including children, stating that "for a single year of exposure to EtO, the cancer risk is greater for children than for adults . . . because EtO can damage DNA."
In August 2018, the EPA released the National Air Toxics Assessment ("NATA")—a screening tool that estimates cancer risks based on emissions data in tens of thousands of census tracts across the United States. The NATA report revealed that people living in communities near Sterigenics' facilities in Illinois, Georgia, and New Mexico had among the highest cancer rates in the country.
That same month, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a report titled "Evaluation of Potential Health Impacts from Ethylene Oxide Emissions." That ...