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CHEMICAL COMPANY PLEADS GUILTY TO HAZARDOUS WASTE CRIME THAT KILLED OHIO EMPLOYEE
Release Date: 10/07/99
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- United States Communications, Education,
Environmental Protection And Media Relations
Agency (1703)
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FOR RELEASE: THURSDAY, OCT. 7, 1999
CHEMICAL COMPANY PLEADS GUILTY TO HAZARDOUS
WASTE CRIME THAT KILLED OHIO EMPLOYEE
WASTE CRIME THAT KILLED OHIO EMPLOYEE
Lancaster Synthesis Inc. (Lancaster), a company headquartered in New Hampshire, pleaded guilty on Sept. 30, in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati to violating the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. The violations created a hazardous situation which caused the death of a man in Cincinnati. Lancaster operated a chemical facility in Blythewood, S.C., where it manufactured highly explosive azide products and other chemicals. The defendant admitted that when the Blythewood facility was closed in 1993, it shipped an unlabeled drum containing an explosive sodium azide compound to Clean Harbors Inc., a hazardous waste storage, transport and disposal company in Cincinnati. In addition to failing to label the drum, as required by law, Lancaster also admitted to falsifying the drum’s manifest to indicate that the drum did not contain hazardous waste. On Oct. 7, 1995, the drum exploded, killing Joel Murray, a supervisor at Clean Harbors. The plea agreement calls for Lancaster to pay a $250,000 fine and develop an environmental compliance program at each of its facilities in the United States. The case was investigated by EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division with the assistance of EPA’s National Enforcement Investigations Center and Superfund program, the FBI, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, the Ohio Attorney General’s Office and the Cincinnati Fire Division. The case is being prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice.
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