Ineos Chlor Americas ended importation of short-chained chlorinated paraffins into the United States and agreed to pay a $175,000 civil penalty under a settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency to resolve violations of the Toxic Substances Control Act.
According to the EPA, Ineos Chlor allegedly imported various chain-length CP into the United States without providing the required notice. Wilmington, Del.-based Ineos Chlor Americas is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ineos, based in Rolle, Switzerland.
With this settlement we have removed all known major sources of this chemical from the marketplace, said Cynthia Giles, assistant administrator for EPAs Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. Short-chain CP have persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic characteristics that pose a number of health risks.
The consent decree requires Ineos Chlor to cease manufacture of short-chained CP and provide the EPA with proper pre-manufacture notices for any medium- and long-chained CP it wishes to manufacture after the decree has been lodged. The proposed settlement, lodged in the U.S. District Court for Delaware, is subject to a 30-day public comment period and final court approval.
Under this settlement, Ineos will continue to market medium- and long-chain chlorinated paraffins in the United States but will not resume the import of its specialist short-chain chlorinated paraffins, which the company stopped in August 2011, Ineos said in a statement provided to Lube Report, noting it agreed to provide notices required by TSCA Section 5 to the EPA for any medium or long-chain CP it wishes to import. The company said the agreement reached with EPA resolves all discrepancies without finding Ineos Chlor liable.
Ineos Chlor Americas and former companies now in Ineos ownership have manufactured chlorinated paraffins for more than 40 years. The products are used as extreme pressure additives in metalworking fluids, as plasticizers in plastics, and as fire retardants in paints and rubber formulations.
According to the company, chlorinated paraffins have been marketed in the United States since the late 1960s.
They were listed in the Toxic Substance Control Act inventory when it was set up in 1978, Ineos noted. In line with U.S. regulations, Ineos Chlor Americas registered these products using the [Chemical Abstracts Service] numbers that were available at the time under TSCA. The company has consistently and openly used these numbers when registering all imports with the U.S. EPA. In December 2009, the U.S. EPA issued a notice of violation, claiming that CAS numbers used by INEOS Chlor Americas Inc. did not describe our chlorinated paraffins in sufficient detail.