Home Depot Pays $10 Million To Settle Hazardous Waste Case

August 21, 2007

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Home Depot is paying nearly $10 million to settle a civil case filed by state and Los Angeles County prosecutors over the retailer’s failure to properly store and transport hazardous waste, the LA Times reports.

An investigation began after a 55-gallon drum at Home Depot’s Marina del Rey store blew up in 2004. Investigators later discovered that chemicals were mixed together into an explosive brew. After the explosion, a waste hauler contracted by Home Depot was driving a truck not certified by the state.

The investigation concluded that Home Depot routinely collected its hazardous waste and placed it in large buckets for offsite disposal. Haulers sometimes improperly stored and labeled the waste and did not keep good records.

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Reader Comments

Do we know what the chemicals that were mixed to create an explosion? If so can you send me more information, because it seems almost impossible to have Home Depot possessing chemicals to create a mixture explosion. Maybe they had high flammable chemicals and someone accidentally heated it up and then exploded, I’ll believe that.

Ryan J Brown | August 24th, 2007

I agree with Ryan. Unless they were mixing pool chlorine or concentrated acids with flammable solvents, this should not happen. Were they accepting waste from their customers or others?

Craig Barney | September 17th, 2007

The hazards are definitely in the stores. I recently walked a retail store and identified more than a hundred products that would be deemed hazardous wastes when not saleable. Home Depot is not the first to have an incindent–theirs’ involved flammables mixed w/ oxidizers–fires have occurred in the past with this mix and others like aerosols. There are also many very dangerous reactions that produce gases very harmful to health. There has been a big box store burn to the ground and another retailer that had a warehouse fire in the recent past; Home Depot has gotten publicity, but they are not unique.

Rodney Pierce | November 12th, 2007