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Friday, September 22, 2000

Dallas lab accused of falsifying results
Jury indicts 13 employees who allegedly altered hazardous waste data
Associated Press
DALLAS - A federal grand jury has indicted 13 former employees of an environmental testing company on charges of altering lab results that were used to determine safety at hazardous waste sites across the country.
   Between January 1994 and December 1997, Intertek Testing Services Environmental Labs Inc. analyzed thousands of projects for governmental and private companies and had billings of $35.7 million, U.S. Attorney Paul Coggins said Thursday.
   All the employees worked at the company's lab in the Dallas suburb of Richardson, which stopped operating in 1998. The facility was formerly known as NDRC Laboratories and Inchcape Testing Services Environmental Laboratories.
   The lab conducted as many as 250,000 separate analyses of air, soil, liquids, pesticides, explosives and nerve-gas agents for the Army Corps of Engineers, the Air Force, other government agencies and private consulting firms.
   The results were used for making decisions at Superfund sites, Department of Defense facilities and hazardous waste sites and for monitoring hazards affecting soil and ground water.
   Federal prosecutors said the defendants altered data to make testing instruments appear to be accurate within the limits required for quality control when they were not.
   "In thousands of tests, reports proved to be false and were known by the lab to be false because the lab had failed to properly calibrate the machines," Coggins said.
   The reason was greed, he said, as maintaining equipment would cost time and money.
   Although retests have not uncovered any immediate public health hazards, further testing will be difficult because some sites were paved in new construction, he said.

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