Connecticut, US – The US Environmental Protection Agency has reached a settlement with Trelleborg Coated Systems US for alleged violations of the Clean Air Act at its New Haven site. The company is to pay a penalty of just over $300k, and has agreed it will comply with the Act or shut down the facility by the beginning of July.
The New Haven site carries out urethane coating and laminating processes onto fabrics, giving them repellent properties against water and chemicals, and also flame retardance. The fabrics are used for technical products including mattresses, protective clothing, aircraft escape slides and blood pressure cuffs.
The violations involved the operation of six coating lines and two laminating lines, their capture systems, and the control system. Subsequent tests of the exhaust stacks showed that the oxidiser system was not completely destroying VOCs emitted from the coating lines. The enclosures around the lines that capture and direct emitted VOCs to the oxidiser were not achieving the desired efficiency, either.
It is not Trelleborg’s first violation of Clean Air Act at a New England facility. In the previous case, the capture system on a coating line in North Smithfield, Rhode Island was found to be ineffective, and the oxidiser there was too small to cope with all the line’s VOCs.
“This settlement will result in improved air quality for the people of New Haven, a community that has historically been overburdened by environmental pollution,” said David Cash, EPA’s regional administrator for New England. “No one should be worried that the air that they breathe has been compromised due to a company’s alleged failure to follow federal laws.”
