Illinois

It's use in sterilization is actually trivial compared to its use in major industries, including the car industry - which produces billion ton quantities of toxic and carcinogenic gasoline. It is immediately clear that gasoline related cancers have killed far more people than ethylene oxide cancers have ever done.

Ethylene oxide (EtO) is the starting material for ethylene glycol, on which antifreeze depends, as does many other heat exchanger type devices. Probably one of the largest uses is to make acrylonitrile, a widely used polymer, also used in cars, as well as in the manufacture of reverse osmosis membranes for water purification.

I suspect strongly, including its trivial use as a sterilizing agent, it's production may have saved more lives than it cost.

I have worked with it and related compounds myself (as well as much worse chemicals, including gasoline) and last I looked I've lived a long time, longer perhaps than I deserved.