A Nevada company is under fire after a viral video posted this week purportedly showed three workers dumping machining chemicals along a fence.
The video, which one of the men said was shot in early March, shows workers emptying barrels of fluid, at least one of which was labeled as containing Hocut 795-H, a machining and grinding fluid produced by Houghton International.
Houghton officials told The Huffington Post that standards were likely not properly followed for the fluid, which federal officials classify as hazardous waste.
The company added in a statement that it actively instructs its customers on the safe handling, shipping and disposal of its products and that it was "unable to determine whether any Houghton products were among the fluids being dumped or even contained in the drum with a Houghton label."
The Nevada Department of Environmental Protection, meanwhile, said that it was aware of the video and was investigating the incident.
The video, which has over a million views on YouTube, does not identify the company in question, but the Reno Gazette-Journal reported that it was shot at Production Pattern & Foundry, a foundry near Carson City that makes metal parts for manufacturing machinery.
The men in the video alleged that they were acting on orders of the company and had done so for weeks. One says that, "This is what we’ve got to do or we’ll lose our jobs.”
"I’m documenting this because I’m not trying to go to prison for this," the man adds. "We’ve been forced to do this."
A company spokesman disputed that characterization and said the material should be dried out and thrown away.
“That is the proper disposal method, pitching it over a hill is not," PPF's Craig Banko told the Gazette-Journal.
Banko said that company officials were meeting to address the problem and would not indicate whether the men in the video were current employees.
