Company accused of faking toxic data

A chemist has accused his former manager at a northwest power company of falsifying data on sediment chemical contamination. According to the chemist, who resigned from the company in 2006 amidst charges of sexual harassment, employees of Energy Northwest in Richland, Wash., deliberately faked analyses of hexavalent chromium concentrations in samples from the Hanford nuclear facility in eastern Washington. In response to this claim, last month a special agent for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) filed an application for a search warrant with the U.S. District Court in Spokane. The search warrant application and accompanying affidavit were unsealed last week.According to Energy Northwest spokesman Brad Peck, the company is looking into the accusations internally, although they are not conducting an official investigation. This is a matter for the EPA, he added. "It's not our investigation, so it's not really for us to say" whether the accusations are true, Peck told The Scientist. "We've operated that lab since the early '80s, it's accredited by the Washington State Department of Ecology, and we've never had anything like this before."In 1989, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the EPA, and the State of Washington Department of Ecology signed an operations and cleanup agreement for the Hanford Site, where soil and groundwater contain radioactive and chemical wastes left over from nuclear production and processing. According to the EPA's affidavit, hexavalent chromium contamination is one of the biggest environmental concerns in the Hanford area. Hexavalent chromium is a well-established carcinogen when inhaled, but its potential to cause cancer when ingested remains controversial. As part of the Hanford cleanup agreement, the DOE hired Washington Closure Hanford to clean up parts of the Columbia River corridor. Washington Closure then hired a local subcontractor called Environmental Assessment Services (EAS) to perform sampling and analysis, and EAS subbed out a portion of this testing to Energy Northwest. Washington Closure Hanford's total cleanup costs are estimated at $1.9 billion through 2012. According to the affidavit, Energy Northwest chemist Richard Toth was given sediment samples to analyze for hexavalent chromium around the end of 2005 or beginning of 2006. Toth discovered that the method Energy Northwest used to analyze chromium contamination produced inconsistent results. When he told his supervisor, lead chemist Thomas Klinckman, about these problems, Toth said that Klinckman told him he knew the method didn't work. Toth said that he observed Klinckman adding chromium to plain water samples in an attempt to fabricate data, sidestepping the problems that arose from analyzing chromium contamination in natural samples.The affidavit does not note whether the allegedly falsified samples show higher or lower levels of hexavalent chromium, relative to other samples."We have not ruled out the possibility that what we have is simply a professional difference of opinion" on how best to analyze the samples, Peck said. "We're not saying that's what it is; we're just saying we have not ruled out that possibility." Peck said he would forward a request for comment to Klinckman, but Klinckman did not respond by deadline. Toth said that he reported the data falsification to his supervisors repeatedly for a year. In September 2006, Toth left Energy Northwest after being accused of sexual harassment. According to the affidavit, Toth believed the sexual harassment allegations were in retaliation for his complaints.On December 8, 2006, Toth made a complaint to the EPA Criminal Tip/Complaint system. In response, EPA special agent Ronald Modjeski spoke with Toth and compiled a search warrant application for Energy Northwest based on Toth's testimony. According to the affidavit, EPA agents are looking for evidence of violations of several federal environmental laws, including making material false statements and false claims, as well as committing mail fraud and wire fraud, since documents containing the allegedly falsified data were mailed and Emailed by Energy Northwest employees. The EPA has not yet filed any charges. "We have not heard anything back from them," Peck said. "We'll wait and hear what they have to say."Spokespersons for the EPA and Washington Closure Hanford declined to speak about an ongoing investigation. Richard Toth did not respond to a request for comment submitted via the company listed as his current employer on the affidavit, RJ Lee Group, a consulting company headquartered in Monroeville, Penn.Melissa Lee Phillips mail@the-scientist.comLinks within this articleEnergy Northwest http://www.energy-northwest.com/M.L. Phillips, "Journal retracts chromium study," The Scientist, June 7, 2006. http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/23590/M.L. Phillips, "Toxicologist should be censured, says group," The Scientist, August 2, 2006. http://www.the-scientist.com/news/daily/24224/T. Sorahan et al., "Lung cancer mortality in nickel/chromium platers, 1946-95," Occupational and Environmental Medicine, April 1998. http://www.the-scientist.com/pubmed/9624277M.L. Phillips, "Chromium paper retracted unfairly, author says," The Scientist, December 22, 2006. http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/38457/Washington Closure Hanford http://www.washingtonclosure.com

Company accused of faking toxic data

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