diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index 2a9fbe797a..5e44f27402 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@ Merged from 2.2:
  * (Hadoop) fix splits calculation (CASSANDRA-10640)
  * (Hadoop) ensure that Cluster instances are always closed (CASSANDRA-10058)
 Merged from 2.1:
+ * sstableloader does not use MAX_HEAP_SIZE env parameter (CASSANDRA-10188)
  * (cqlsh) Improve COPY TO performance and error handling (CASSANDRA-9304)
  * Create compression chunk for sending file only (CASSANDRA-10680)
  * Forbid compact clustering column type changes in ALTER TABLE (CASSANDRA-8879)
diff --git a/bin/sstableloader b/bin/sstableloader
index 26b1e3f490..67829b8c1a 100755
--- a/bin/sstableloader
+++ b/bin/sstableloader
@@ -43,7 +43,11 @@ if [ -z "$CLASSPATH" ]; then
     exit 1
 fi
 
-"$JAVA" $JAVA_AGENT -ea -cp "$CLASSPATH" $JVM_OPTS -Xmx256M \
+if [ "x$MAX_HEAP_SIZE" = "x" ]; then
+    MAX_HEAP_SIZE="256M"
+fi
+
+"$JAVA" $JAVA_AGENT -ea -cp "$CLASSPATH" $JVM_OPTS -Xmx$MAX_HEAP_SIZE \
         -Dcassandra.storagedir="$cassandra_storagedir" \
         -Dlogback.configurationFile=logback-tools.xml \
         org.apache.cassandra.tools.BulkLoader "$@"