Firm Fined $30,000 for Using PCB in Products It Made, Imported

A North County manufacturer of electrical devices was fined $30,000 Thursday after pleading guilty to illegal importation and sale of capacitors containing PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls).

PCB is a toxic substance banned in the United States since 1979 because of substantial research linking it to cancer and birth defects.

CSI Technologies of San Marcos entered the guilty plea in federal court in San Diego, U.S. Atty. Peter K. Nunez said Thursday. The plea to criminal charges followed a yearlong federal grand jury investigation that began after federal environmental officials were tipped to the possibility that there was PCB contamination in an Escondido building then being vacated by CSI.

Those officials found 28 barrels of oil laced with PCBs buried in a concrete-covered pit inside the former capacitor factory in September. A $240,000 cleanup of the building began earlier this month.

In December, federal officials seized 2,800 illegal capacitors at CSI’s San Marcos headquarters.

According to Nunez, CSI made an import and sales arrangement with a Colombian manufacturer of a specialized high-voltage capacitor used in precipitators, X-ray devices and other power supply situations. (A capacitor is an electrical device that can store a charge. Until banned in the United States, PCBs were regularly added to oil-based fluids used for insulating and cooling capacitors.)

Nunez said that CSI was aware that the Colombian capacitors were insulated with fluid containing PCBs but imported them anyway in violation of U.S. law. Nunez said that the then-president of CSI, Bruce R. Hayworth, confirmed the presence of PCBs through testing but nevertheless continued to import the devices.

Hayworth also allowed distribution of the capacitors to take place in violation of federal environmental protection statutes, Nunez said. Hayworth died Jan. 20 of a heart ailment.

Nunez said Thursday that the company’s new management has cooperated with federal investigators and has completely severed its ties with the Colombian company, called Codecol.

The government’s recommendation of a $30,000 fine, levied Thursday by Gordon Thompson Jr., chief U.S. district judge here, was predicated on CSI’s recent cooperation, Nunez said.

CSI has agreed to notify all customers who were shipped capacitors containing PCBs, and to replace and properly dispose of all capacitors returned to the company.

CSI shipped several thousand of the capacitors nationwide and overseas, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Charles S. Crandall, who helped handle the case. Crandall said Thursday that CSI’s importation began in July, 1981, and continued until last December, when federal authorities carried out their seizure.

Crandall said that the contamination of the Escondido plant probably did not result from the Colombian capacitors, since they arrived sealed in containers at the CSI plant. Rather, Crandall said, the improperly disposed PCBs most likely come from CSI manufacturing operations before the government’s ban on PCBs in 1979. No criminal charges will be filed in connection with the illegal dumping, Crandall said.

Phone calls to CSI headquarters in San Marcos on Thursday went unanswered and CSI attorney George Shena did not return a reporter’s call. Shena late last fall had disputed the importance of the PCB-contaminated barrels, calling federal allegations of illegal dumping “really incredible” and denying that company officials knew of the improper disposal.

However, insurance companies for CSI and the building’s leaseholder, ATI Industries, early this year agreed to pay for the cleanup.