The Billion-Dollar Brand Behind the Violations

Engineered Polymer Solutions (EPS) is a resin manufacturing operation located at 5501 E. Slauson Ave. in Commerce, California. Resins are the base materials that go into paints. The facility is owned and operated by The Sherwin-Williams Company — the same corporation that posted over $22 billion in net revenues in 2023.

The EPA conducted a compliance evaluation inspection of the facility on May 4 and May 5, 2021. What inspectors found was not a single slip-up or an isolated paperwork error. What they found was a pattern: a facility that had been handling hazardous chemical waste for years under conditions that violated federal and California environmental law at every level — from the tanks on the ground to the documents in the filing cabinet.

The hazardous wastes involved included ignitable waste (D001), corrosive waste (D002), and spent non-halogenated solvents including xylene (F003), toluene (F003), and n-butyl alcohol (F003) — chemicals that can catch fire, corrode tissue, and damage the nervous system and organs with sustained exposure. These are not abstract chemical names. They are the everyday reality of the workers and the surrounding community in Commerce, California.

Commerce, California: Who Actually Lives Here?

Commerce is a small, densely industrial city southeast of downtown Los Angeles. Its roughly 12,000 residents live surrounded by warehouses, processing plants, and manufacturing facilities. The community is predominantly Latino and working-class. Environmental violations in facilities like EPS do not occur in a vacuum — they occur in neighborhoods where people go to sleep and wake up next to these sites.

The EPA’s inspection covered the 2018–2021 period. For at least three years, residents and workers near this facility lived alongside a hazardous waste operation that lacked proper permits, proper containment, proper air controls, and proper record-keeping.

Six Counts. Years of Failure. One Cracked Tank.

The EPA’s enforcement document lays out six separate violation categories, each one a different way Sherwin-Williams’ facility cut corners on hazardous waste. These are not technicalities. These are the building blocks of an environmental protection system designed to prevent chemical contamination from leaking into soil, air, and groundwater — and EPS broke every one of them.

Count I: They Didn’t Even Check What They Were Throwing Away

Federal and California law require that any company generating waste determine whether that waste is hazardous before it goes anywhere. EPS skipped this step repeatedly. In at least 36 instances from 2018 through 2021, the facility shipped waste from Tank T-20 labeled as non-hazardous — without the required hazardous waste codes (D001, F003, F005). In an additional seven instances between 2018 and 2020, butanol solution was shipped with an incomplete code, missing the F003 designation entirely.

These are not rounding errors. The waste in question contained toluene, xylene, and acetone — all regulated solvents. The company generated this waste, loaded it into trucks, handed drivers manifests that said “not hazardous,” and sent it to ordinary landfills not equipped to handle it.

Count II and III: Toxic Air, Open Vents, and Made-Up Numbers

To legally store hazardous waste on-site without a full permit, a facility must meet strict air emission control standards. EPS claimed its Tank T-20 was exempt from those standards because the waste had low volatile organic concentrations. The EPA measured the vent pipe on T-20 and found 10,000 parts per million of volatile organics — against a legal threshold of 500 ppm for exemption. That is 20 times the limit. The data EPS used to claim the exemption was taken after dilution in the tank, not at the point of origination as required, and a 2021 test used the wrong sampling method entirely.

The tank also had an open vent pipe on its roof with no closure device and no connection to any control system. Volatile organic compounds — including toluene, which causes nervous system damage — vented freely into the air at a facility surrounded by a working community in one of the most polluted air corridors in the United States.

Count IV: Cracked Walls, No Leak Detection, No Slope to Drain

Secondary containment exists for one reason: if a hazardous waste tank leaks, the liner catches it before it reaches the soil and groundwater. EPS’s Tank T-20 had cracks in its external liner, insufficient containment volume, no leak detection system, and no sloped drainage design. If T-20 leaked — and the cracked liner means it very possibly did — nothing would have caught it, nothing would have detected it, and nothing would have drained it away from the ground below.

Count V: They Stopped Checking the Tank

Federal law requires daily inspections of hazardous waste tanks. EPS failed to conduct or document those inspections for at least 25 days in 2020 and 2021. When you skip daily inspections on a cracked tank full of ignitable solvents, you are not just breaking a rule — you are removing the only early-warning system that tells you something is going wrong before it becomes a spill, a fire, or a contamination event.

Count VI: They Sent Hazardous Waste to a Regular Landfill

In at least 36 shipments from 2018 through 2021, EPS routed T-20 waste — which the EPA later confirmed was legally hazardous — to ordinary Subtitle D landfills. These are standard municipal solid waste landfills. They are not designed, engineered, or permitted to handle hazardous chemical waste. Before sending waste to a landfill, the law requires a determination of whether it needs special treatment first. EPS skipped that step entirely.

The Non-Financial Ledger

What Money Cannot Repay

Commerce, California sits inside the South Coast Air Basin — consistently ranked among the most polluted air regions in the United States. The 405, the 710, the 60: freight corridors feeding the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach run through and around this city every hour of every day. The people who live in Commerce already breathe air thick with diesel exhaust, particulate matter, and industrial byproduct. They did not get to opt into that reality. It came with the zip code.

Into that environment, a Sherwin-Williams subsidiary operated a tank — Tank T-20 — that collected wastewater from a scrubber system, stormwater runoff, laboratory waste containing toluene and acetone, and compressor waste. That tank had a cracked liner. It had no leak detection system. Its secondary containment did not slope to drain spills away. Its vent pipe was open to the air. For years, the EPA document confirms, no one at the company was properly tracking whether the waste in that tank crossed legal thresholds for organic vapor or volatility. They guessed. And they guessed wrong — by a factor of 20.

Toluene is not a nuisance chemical. Short-term exposure causes headaches, dizziness, confusion, and nausea. Long-term exposure damages the central nervous system, the kidneys, and the liver. Pregnant women exposed to elevated toluene levels face documented risks of fetal developmental harm. Xylene triggers respiratory irritation and at sufficient concentrations causes neurological effects. These are the chemicals that were present in T-20, that escaped through an open, uncapped vent pipe at concentrations 20 times the legal limit, and that have been associated with the kinds of industrial operations that working-class communities in the Los Angeles Basin have been fighting for decades.

The dignity violation here runs deeper than chemistry. When a company ships material it knows contains regulated solvents to an ordinary landfill — labeled as regular garbage — it transfers risk to garbage workers, landfill operators, and the communities that live near those disposal sites. The workers who drove those trucks, who unloaded those totes, who processed that waste at receiving facilities: they were never told what they were handling. They had no hazardous material training specific to that shipment. They had no right-to-know moment. They had a manifest that said the cargo was not hazardous — because EPS wrote it that way. That is a decision. Someone made that choice. And the people who bore the consequence of that choice had no seat at the table when it was made.

There is also the question of what the cracked liner in T-20’s secondary containment actually allowed to escape. The enforcement document does not answer this directly — it records the crack, records the absence of drainage design, records the absence of leak detection, and moves on. Regulators settled the case without requiring the company to investigate or report on whether contamination occurred. The neighborhood does not get an answer to that question. The settlement resolves the company’s federal civil penalty liability. It does not commission a soil test. It does not test the groundwater. The cracked liner is ordered repaired within 90 days. What escaped through it before May 2021 remains unexamined in this document.

And then there is the settlement structure itself. The company pays $306,436 (roughly the annual salary of six average American workers). They neither admit nor deny the facts. They waive the right to appeal. They certify they have returned to compliance. The legal matter is resolved. But no one in Commerce, California — no worker, no resident, no person who breathed the air near 5501 E. Slauson Avenue between 2018 and 2021 — receives any notification, any compensation, or any formal accounting of what was done in their neighborhood. The public receives a public document and a closed file. That is the system working as designed. That is exactly the problem.

Legal Receipts

Direct from the Document — Their Words, Not Ours

“Based on a review of Respondent’s waste manifests, EPA determined that on at least 36 instances from 2018 through 2021, Respondent shipped waste from T-20 as non-RCRA hazardous waste, without the waste codes D001, F003 and F005.” — EPA Consent Agreement, Count I, Paragraph 27

“During the CEI, EPA measured VO concentrations of 10,000 ppm at the overflow vent pipe for T-20, which exceeded the 500 ppmw limit for the exemption from Article 28.5 requirements.” — EPA Consent Agreement, Count III, Paragraph 46

“EPA determined that T-20’s secondary containment system lacked a leak detection system and sloped design or other drainage design. Further, the external liner system of T-20 did not have adequate secondary containment volume and there were cracks in the liner.” — EPA Consent Agreement, Count IV, Paragraph 58

“During the CEI, EPA observed an open vent pipe on the roof of T-20 without a closure device or connection to a closed-vent system that was vented to a control device.” — EPA Consent Agreement, Count III, Paragraph 52

“Respondent shipped T-20 waste as non-RCRA hazardous waste to one or more non-hazardous solid waste landfills (‘Subtitle D Landfills’) in at least 36 shipments from 2018 through 2021. Disposal at Subtitle D Landfills constitutes land disposal and is not disposal at a hazardous waste treatment facility.” — EPA Consent Agreement, Count VI, Paragraphs 70–71

Societal Impact Mapping

The Ripple Effects Regulators Don’t Price In

Environmental Degradation: A Cracked Tank, An Open Vent, and Soil We Haven’t Tested

The environmental record in this case is a document full of structural failures and an absence of answers. Tank T-20 had a cracked secondary containment liner with no leak detection system and no drainage slope. The purpose of secondary containment in hazardous waste management is singular: catch anything that escapes before it reaches the earth. A cracked liner with no drainage means anything that leaked pooled at the bottom of the containment and, potentially, seeped through the cracks into the ground below. The enforcement document orders the cracks repaired but does not order soil or groundwater testing.

The open vent pipe on the roof of T-20 — measuring 10,000 parts per million of volatile organic compounds — released chemical vapor directly into the air above the facility. The EPA document confirms this vent had no closure device and was connected to no control system. At 20 times the legal concentration threshold, this vent was functioning as an active release point for hazardous chemical vapor in a community that already carries an outsized share of California’s industrial air pollution burden.

Beyond the facility itself, the 36 shipments of hazardous waste routed to ordinary Subtitle D landfills represent a transfer of environmental risk to at least one other location — and possibly more. Subtitle D landfills are engineered for municipal solid waste, not for ignitable solvents and spent chemical waste streams. The EPA document does not identify which landfills received these shipments or whether those sites have been notified. The contamination trail, if one exists, runs outside the boundary of this settlement and into communities we cannot name from this document alone.

Public Health: Toluene, Xylene, and the People Who Breathe Nearby

The specific chemicals identified in this case — toluene, xylene, n-butyl alcohol, and acetone — are regulated as hazardous precisely because of their documented effects on human health. Toluene exposure at sufficient concentrations causes central nervous system depression, headaches, vertigo, impaired cognitive function, and in chronic cases, permanent neurological damage. The EPA classifies it as a hazardous air pollutant. Xylene produces similar neurological effects and irritates the respiratory tract, eyes, and skin. Pregnant workers and residents face additional documented risks: toluene is associated with developmental harm to fetuses at concentrations well below acute toxicity thresholds.

The open vent on T-20 measured 10,000 ppm of volatile organics — a reading taken at the overflow vent pipe itself. At that concentration, without any closed-vent system or control device, these compounds entered the ambient air of the Commerce facility and its surroundings. Workers at the facility were present in this environment. Neighbors of the facility live in its shadow. The enforcement document does not include any health monitoring data, any worker exposure assessments, or any ambient air quality monitoring results from the surrounding neighborhood. The settlement closes the legal file. It does not close the health exposure question.

It is also worth noting who absorbs these risks. Commerce is a majority-Latino, working-class community. Environmental justice research documents consistently that communities of color and low-income communities in the United States bear disproportionate exposure to industrial pollution, hazardous waste sites, and air toxics. This is not a coincidence of geography. It is the predictable outcome of decades of industrial siting decisions, zoning policies, and enforcement gaps that allowed facilities like this one to operate in these communities with inadequate oversight.

Economic Inequality: A Fine That Costs Nothing and Changes Less

Sherwin-Williams is a global corporation. In 2023, the company reported net revenues exceeding $22 billion. The fine in this case — $306,436 (roughly enough to buy a median-priced home in many American markets, or cover one year of rent for eight average families) — represents less than 0.0014% of that annual revenue. That is not a deterrent. That is a rounding error on a quarterly earnings call.

The structure of the settlement compounds this imbalance. The company neither admits nor denies wrongdoing. No individual executive faces personal accountability. The company pays the fine, certifies compliance, and moves on. The cost of operating outside the law for three or more years is offset by whatever savings the company realized from not investing in proper permits, proper containment infrastructure, proper air monitoring equipment, and proper waste disposal. The settlement does not require EPS or Sherwin-Williams to calculate or disgorge those savings. The accounting runs in one direction only.

For the workers and residents of Commerce, the economic calculus looks entirely different. They contributed nothing to this situation and received no compensation from it. If anyone in the surrounding community suffered health effects from years of exposure to improperly managed hazardous waste and uncontrolled chemical vapor, their recourse is civil litigation — expensive, slow, and difficult to win against a corporation with in-house legal counsel and billions in resources. The fine goes to the federal government. The neighborhood gets nothing except a repaired liner on a tank they may never have known existed.

The “Cost of a Life” Metric

What the Fine Actually Buys — And What It Doesn’t

I have many other Sherwin-Williams articles on this website: https://evilcorporations.com/sherwin-williams-toxic-scandal-epa-public-health-impact/

There is also this article on Sherwin-Williams but specifically for its destruction @ Cedar Rapids, Iowa: https://evilcorporations.com/sherwin-williams-epa-hazardous-waste-fine/

Please visit this link on the EPA’s website for the consent agreement for this specific case with Engineered Polymer Solutions: https://yosemite.epa.gov/OA/RHC/EPAAdmin.nsf/Filings/ED58B2AE845E74E585258D100017681B/$File/Engineered%20Polymer%20Solutions%20(RCRA-09-2025-0091)%20-%20Filed%20CAFO.pdf

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