UTAH REFINERY MANAGER PLEADS GUILTY TO ASBESTOS CHARGES
26 years ago
Eugene Dalton with residences in Salt Lake City and Moab, Utah, pleaded guilty on Sept. 22, in U.S. District Court for the District of Utah in Salt Lake City to violating the Clean Air Act by failing to follow workplace safety standards for the removal of asbestos. Dalton is the designer and operator of Book Cliffs Energy Co., a facility in Green River, Utah which refines used oil. The defendant admitted that during the summer of 1993, he failed to take proper precautions to protect workers from inhaling airborne asbestos fibers when approximately 186 cubic feet of asbestos-containing material was removed from tanks, columns, heat exchangers and other pipe assemblies that were used in the construction of his company. Inhalation of airborne asbestos fibers can lead to lung cancer, a lung disease known as “asbestosis” and mesothelioma which is a cancer of the chest and abdominal cavities. At the time of his plea, Dalton was sentenced to nine months confinement, three years supervised probation and a $2,500 fine. The case was investigated by EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division, EPA’s National Enforcement Investigations Center and the Environmental Crimes Unit of the Utah Attorney General’s Office.
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