“Elections have consequences”?

Our two political parties ARE NOT the same.

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.

exposed to in the lab and the production of other chemicals. I suspect that is some other chemical that might be responsible for any increase in the number of cancer deaths near the plant.

Quite a lot!
While we treated it as carcinogenic, I always felt the biggest hazard was flammability & BLEVE.
Unlike most organic compounds, there is no upper explosion limit for EO.
Nearly 40% of molecular mass is oxygen. While less efficient at very high concentration in air, even at 100% combustion is self-sustaining. And the energy release per unit mass is very high & rapid.
While we treated the health hazards with respect, it was always combustion about which we were most concerned.

...was entirely on a lecture bottle scale in the hood. I used it for a few reactions that ultimately went nowhere.

On the other hand, I have spent time in plants where metric ton quantities of phosgene were processed.

I spent many years working with phosgene, but the scariest substance I know well from direct experience is HF.

While I strongly support regulation in most cases, I have to say that I've seen regulations involved in handling HF that increased, rather than decreased the associated hazards. Regulations that are divorced from science, and they do exist, are a real problem.

Actually, even as I have a healthy respect for the hazards associated with HF, I actually believe that some processes involving its use might save humanity from itself.

I investigated an incident of damage to coalescing filters (and instrumentation) in an environmental control system.
The raw material, (using HF as an alkylation catalyst) was not cleaned of organofluorides.
So, in the process under review, the extremely high electronegativity & extreme temperatures liberated HF into the diluent air.
The damage to the system was immense. After only 2 days of production.
The spun glass in the coalescing filters turned to mush.
Fortunately, after only 2 days and a lot of HF consumed by the damaged process, our numbers said worker exposure was very, very low, if any. Fortunately.
Nothing to be careless with.
BTW: the claim against the supplier was for $4 million, in around 1990. Expensive mistake by the supplier.

...when I was a kid I used to bicycle ocassionally past the ExxonMobil refinery on Crenshaw Blvd in Torrance in the LA basin.

That plant at one time handled ton quantities of HF.

One of the fun things about Crenshaw Blvd is its proximity to the Inglewood Newport fault. There was, I think, a Bophal in there that thankfully never happened.

The fossil fuel industry is dangerous in normal operations but the potential for accidents make it much much worse although such accidents when they happen go right down the memory hole.

They refit HF handling 10-12 years ago. It's now a big bank of cylinders instead of one big bottle. It's covered with a metal roof, and a shower system keeps the outer shells cool in summer.
There's also a deluge/fogger system to mitigate releases.
The release size went down 95% with that new system.
With it's proximity to home, and my lab/office being only a couple miles away, I was glad for that redesign.