DAP Global stored open, unlabeled drums of flammable toxic chemicals inside a room called “the flame shed” for years, and the federal government let them pay $5,000 (less than what many Americans spend on groceries in a year) to make it go away.

The Company Behind the Caulk Gun

DAP Global, Inc. is a Delaware corporation that manufactures caulks, sealants, foam, adhesives, patch and repair products. You have almost certainly used their products. The company operates a facility at 4630 North Point Blvd. in Baltimore, Maryland, and the EPA has assigned it a formal hazardous waste generator identification number since March 24, 2010.

The Baltimore facility generates hazardous waste in the form of solvents, linseed oil, universal waste lamps, batteries, and aerosols. These are classified under EPA Hazardous Waste codes D001 (ignitable), D035 (methyl ethyl ketone), and F003 (spent non-halogenated solvents). DAP Global holds no permit for the treatment, storage, or disposal of this waste at the facility.

Because they generate large volumes of this waste, they are legally classified as a Large Quantity Generator. That designation comes with strict requirements. The EPA inspection on March 12, 2024 found that DAP Global violated nearly every single one of them.

What They Actually Found Inside That Factory

On March 12, 2024, EPA representatives conducted a Compliance Evaluation Inspection at DAP Global’s Baltimore facility. What they found paints a picture of a company treating hazardous waste rules as optional.

Open Drums of Flammable Chemicals in the “Flame Shed”

Inside a room the documents refer to as “the flame shed,” inspectors found an open 55-gallon drum of waste ethylene. A 55-gallon drum is roughly the size of a large oil barrel. The chemical was simply sitting there, uncovered, in a room named for its fire risk.

Federal law requires containers of hazardous waste to remain closed except when workers are actively adding or removing material. DAP Global violated that rule. The document is unambiguous: “the inspector observed an open 55-gallon drum of waste ethylene in the flame shed.”

The Maintenance Shop Was Worse

Inside the facility’s maintenance shop, inspectors found ten open containers of solvent-based paints, oils, and chemicals, plus an open aerosol can-puncturing unit sitting on top of another 55-gallon drum of aerosol hazardous waste. None of these were properly sealed. None were properly labeled.

They also found eight containers of hazardous waste in the flame shed and a separate 55-gallon drum with an aerosol puncturing unit affixed to the top in the maintenance shop. None of them carried the legally required date marking showing when waste accumulation started. Workers had no way of knowing how long any of this material had been sitting there.

Batteries and Light Bulbs Sitting Unlabeled Since 2020

Federal law caps the time a company can accumulate universal waste at one year. DAP Global blew past that limit so thoroughly it’s almost impressive. Inspectors found a 5-gallon bucket of universal waste batteries with an accumulation start date of March 24, 2021, and a box of universal waste lamps marked May 19, 2020. That lamp box had been sitting there for nearly four years.

The box of lamps also carried zero labeling identifying its contents as “Universal Waste Lamps,” as required by law. Anyone walking past that box would have had no legal warning about what was inside.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What Money Can’t Measure

The workers inside that facility are the people who had to breathe the air in rooms where 55-gallon drums of flammable chemicals sat open and uncontrolled. Acetate, mineral spirits, diethanolamine, methyl ethyl ketone: these are not abstract regulatory categories. They are real chemicals with real effects on real human lungs, skin, and nervous systems. The workers who walked through the flame shed and the maintenance shop every shift had no way of knowing how long those open containers had been accumulating vapors, because DAP Global never marked the start dates.

That missing date stamp is not a paperwork technicality. It is the only mechanism federal law provides to ensure workers and emergency responders know what they are dealing with and how long it has been there. When DAP Global left eight containers and multiple drums without accumulation start dates, they stripped the people inside that building of the basic right to informed safety. The law exists precisely because workers without that information cannot protect themselves.

The box of fluorescent lamps sitting in the maintenance shop since May 19, 2020 represents a failure compounding on failure. Universal waste lamps contain mercury. A box left unmarked and unlabeled for nearly four years is a box that could be handled incorrectly by any maintenance worker who had no idea what it contained. The absence of a label reading “Universal Waste Lamps” is not a minor oversight; it is an erasure of the warning system that exists to protect the people closest to the hazard.

The community surrounding 4630 North Point Blvd. in Baltimore, Maryland also deserves a place in this ledger. North Point is a working-class neighborhood situated near the Chesapeake Bay. The area’s residents did not get to vote on whether a large quantity generator of flammable hazardous chemicals would operate in their backyard without proper permits or proper safety controls. They found out the same way they always do: when a government document was filed and a journalist went looking. The community’s proximity to this facility is not incidental. It is the predictable geography of environmental risk, where the people with the least power absorb the most exposure.

Legal Receipts: Straight From the Document

“Respondent failed to mark containers of hazardous waste with the accumulation start date… During the CEI, the inspector observed eight (8) containers of hazardous waste in the flame shed and a 55-gallon drum with an aerosol puncturing unit affixed to the top in the maintenance shop that were not marked with the date when waste accumulation began.” EPA Docket RCRA-03-2025-0091, Paragraph 10(a)(i)

“The inspector observed an open 55-gallon drum of waste ethylene in the flame shed. The inspector also observed ten (10) open containers of various solvent-based paints, oils, and chemicals and an open aerosol can-puncturing unit atop a 55-gallon drum of aerosol hazardous waste within the maintenance shop.” EPA Docket RCRA-03-2025-0091, Paragraph 10(b)

“From at least May 19, 2020, until March 12, 2024, Respondent accumulated universal waste for greater than one (1) year… the inspector observed a 5-gallon bucket of universal waste batteries with an accumulation start date of March 24, 2021, and a box of universal waste lamps with an accumulation start date of May 19, 2020.” EPA Docket RCRA-03-2025-0091, Paragraph 10(c)

“Complainant and Respondent agree that settlement of this matter for a total penalty of FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS ($5,000.00) is in the public interest.” EPA Docket RCRA-03-2025-0091, Paragraph 11

“In signing this Agreement, Respondent… neither admits nor denies the specific factual allegations in this Agreement… expressly waives its right to a hearing on any issue of law or fact in this Agreement and any right to appeal the accompanying Final Order.” EPA Docket RCRA-03-2025-0091, Paragraph 14

Societal Impact Mapping

Environmental Degradation

The chemicals DAP Global mishandled are not benign. The facility generated hazardous waste classified as D001 (ignitable), D035 (methyl ethyl ketone), and F003 (spent non-halogenated solvents including acetate and mineral spirits). These classifications exist because these substances pose real risks of fire, explosion, and soil and groundwater contamination if they are stored improperly or released into the environment.

Open containers of these materials, stored without proper controls in a facility that holds no permit for hazardous waste storage, represent a direct pathway for chemical vapors and potential spills to move beyond the building’s walls. The facility sits in a community adjacent to the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The ecological sensitivity of that region amplifies the stakes of every gallon of solvent left uncapped in a flame shed.

The fact that violations stretched from at least May 2020 to March 2024, nearly four full years, means the environmental exposure window was not a one-time event. It was a sustained, multi-year operational practice of non-compliance in a facility generating large quantities of ignitable and solvent-based hazardous waste.

Public Health

Methyl ethyl ketone, mineral spirits, and diethanolamine are chemicals with well-documented health effects. Methyl ethyl ketone causes headaches, dizziness, and respiratory irritation at levels of occupational exposure. Mineral spirits are petroleum-derived solvents that affect the central nervous system with chronic exposure. Diethanolamine has been linked to liver effects in animal studies. Workers in the flame shed and maintenance shop at DAP Global’s Baltimore facility faced these exposures in a setting where proper containment and labeling rules were not followed.

The aerosol puncturing unit sitting atop a 55-gallon drum of aerosol hazardous waste in the maintenance shop represents a particularly acute risk. Aerosol cans under pressure, combined with improper puncturing equipment and an open collection drum in an uncontrolled environment, create conditions that safety regulations exist specifically to prevent. The presence of an open puncturing unit in a room alongside ten other open containers of solvents and chemicals compounds that risk substantially.

Universal waste lamps containing mercury, stored in an unlabeled box for years and potentially handled by maintenance workers with no information about the contents, create a direct mercury exposure risk. Mercury vapors released from broken lamps in an enclosed workspace cause neurological damage. The absence of the required “Universal Waste Lamps” label is the direct mechanism by which that risk goes unmanaged.

Economic Inequality

The $5,000 (about what a minimum-wage worker in Maryland earns in roughly two months of full-time work) penalty DAP Global paid to resolve four documented hazardous waste violations creates a perverse economic incentive. The cost of proper hazardous waste management, including permits, proper storage infrastructure, labeling systems, and disposal contracts, is many multiples of five thousand dollars. The penalty for skipping all of it for four years is five thousand dollars. The math rewards non-compliance.

This disparity hits working-class and lower-income communities hardest. Facilities like the North Point Baltimore factory tend to locate in communities where land is cheaper and political resistance to industrial activity is lower. The people living nearest to those facilities absorb the environmental and health costs of corporate non-compliance, while the corporation absorbs a fine small enough to round off a quarterly budget report.

The Cost of a Life Metric

What Now? Who’s Responsible and What You Can Do

The Executives on Record

The settlement was signed on June 10, 2025 by Robert Massetti, Vice President of Operations, DAP Global, Inc. His signature represents the company’s certification that violations have been corrected and that all documentation provided to EPA was true and accurate. He is the named responsible party in the public record.

The Regulatory Watchlist

• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 3: The agency that brought this enforcement action. Contact them to demand follow-up inspection timelines and public reporting on compliance verification after settlements like this one.
• Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE): The state-level agency that received prior notice of this enforcement action and administers Maryland’s authorized hazardous waste program under RCRA. Hold them accountable for ongoing monitoring of this facility.
• U.S. EPA Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA): The national office responsible for the penalty policies that produced this $5,000 outcome. Demand reform of the 1990 RCRA Civil Penalty Policy that makes fines this small possible.

The Bigger Fight

A $5,000 fine for four years of hazardous waste violations is a policy failure, not a one-time mistake. The RCRA Civil Penalty Policy dates to 1990, revised in 2003, and it produces fines that corporations can treat as a rounding error. If you live near an industrial facility, connect with local environmental justice organizations, request public records on your facility’s inspection history through your state environmental agency, and support advocacy groups pushing for penalty reform at the federal level. Grassroots pressure on the EPA and Congress is the only mechanism that has ever forced this system to change.