Coughing up blood is never a good thing. So when Jason Pacheco started doing just that after following orders to mix a vat of unknown chemicals with cement at work, he complained to the Department of Health and filed suit against the company.
Pacheco was a temporary worker and had never handled hazardous waste before, DOH records state. In December 2002, Bonded Materials Company’s production assistant manager Leighton Panui allegedly instructed Pacheco to build a bin out of old wooden pallets and a plastic liner, and then use it to mix unusable chemicals stored at the company’s Kapolei site.
After Pacheco had built the bin in the parking lot, he asked Panui for protective safety equipment for dealing the chemicals. He was given a disposable paper mask.
The next day, records state, Panui showed Pacheco what he was to dispose of: approximately 20 pallets laden with various chemical-filled containers, from five-gallon buckets to quart-sized ones, some of which Pacheco recognized as bonding or patching material for cement.
Despite the strong odor that emanated from the containers when he opened them, DOH records indicate, Pacheco began layering the liquids with the contents of discarded or defective bags of dry cement until the bin was three-quarters full, which took three eight-hour days. While he did this, the mixture bubbled and steamed, spilling and splashing on him.
It took a few days for the mixture to solidify. Pacheco took apart the pallets holding the bin together and, under Panui’s direction, shoveled the hardened mixture into garbage dumpsters. Panui then allegedly told Pacheco to throw the empty chemical containers, most of which had some residue, into the dumpsters as well, and “to layer the top of the dumpsters with empty cement bags so that the garbage collector would not notice that Respondents were disposing of chemical containers in the dumpsters,” states an April 1, 2002, complaint and order against Bonded Materials by the state Department of Health’s Solid and Hazardous Waste Branch.
Some time after Pacheco’s work, he began coughing up blood and developed a rash on his arms and blisters on his chest, stomach, neck, and face “where the chemicals had spilled and splashed on him,” the complaint states.
The DOH charged Bonded Materials with seven violations: treatment of hazardous waste without a permit, storage of hazardous waste without a permit, failure to make a hazardous waste determination, mismanagement of containers, failure to make a hazardous waste determination at another site in Pu’uhale, illegal transportation of hazardous waste, and failure to provide training.
For these violations, Bonded was fined $265,144. Bonded Materials makes concrete mixtures for builders and in addition to its two O’ahu offices, has bases in Kona, Maui, Guam, Saipan, and Arizona.
A DOH review of a 2001 inventory of hazardous waste stored at Bonded’s yard found 39 drums of hazardous waste including resins, seals, and other industrial contaminants.
To date, the fine has not been resolved. The latest correspondence between the state and Bonded Materials is an October 14, 2002 letter from deputy attorney general Dana Oshiro Viola to Bonded attorney V. Brian Piccolo, stating that she would be contacting the DOH hearings officer to schedule a date for an administrative hearing.
Settlement talks and a federal criminal investigation of the incident had delayed the hearing, Oshiro Viola told Environment Hawai’i. She added that a hearing, “a purely state action,” should be scheduled for some time this year.
— Teresa Dawson
Volume 14, Number 8 February 2004
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