Corporate Misconduct Case Study: Interstate Chemical Company and Its Impact on Public Health

A Danger Hidden in Plain Sight

For over a year, from April 2022 to June 2023, anyone who picked up a container of Interstate Chemical Company’s “Sodium Hypochlorite 15 Sanitizer” was holding a product with a hidden danger. It wasn’t just the corrosive chemical inside—a substance that can cause “irreversible eye damage and skin burns”.

The true danger was in the label itself: a collection of incomplete warnings, misleading instructions, and unapproved uses that created a false sense of security for every worker, farmer, and business owner who used it.

This is a story about the people who handled these mislabeled chemicals, trusting the information provided to keep them safe.

It’s about the agricultural workers who were never told about the Worker Protection Standard requirements because Interstate Chemical simply left that entire section off its label. It’s about the employees in industrial settings who were given incorrect instructions for safely sanitizing equipment, potentially exposing themselves and others to harm.

Every missing sentence was a gap in the armor protecting their health.

The Corporate Playbook: How the Harm Was Done

Interstate Chemical Company, a pesticide-producing establishment registered with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), systematically distributed and sold a misbranded pesticide. The company takes bulk shipments of Sodium Hypochlorite 15 and repackages it into smaller containers for sale to various industries. But during this process, the company failed to ensure the labels on its products matched the official, EPA-approved version from February 15, 2017.

An EPA inspection on June 28, 2023, uncovered a startling range of discrepancies. The investigation revealed that the company’s labels were totally fundamentally compromised.

• Entire safety sections were missing. Critical instructions for agricultural uses, methods for sanitizing food-contact and non-food-contact surfaces, and disinfection protocols were completely absent.
• Safety warnings were altered. The “DANGER” section on Interstate’s label was inconsistent with the approved version, potentially downplaying the severity of the risks.
• Unapproved and untested uses were added. Interstate Chemical’s label included an entire section on using the product in “SPAS AND HOT TUBS,” a use that was never approved by the EPA, introducing unknown risks to the public. It also added a confusing and unapproved sentence to the laundry sanitizing instructions.

These are systemic failures to adhere to the most basic requirement of chemical safety: providing true and accurate information. Interstate Chemical distributed this misbranded product on at least five separate occasions, demonstrating a pattern of negligence, not some unfortunate isolated mistake.

A Cascade of Consequences: The Real-World Impact

The dry, legalistic language of the EPA document masks a cascade of potential real-world consequences that ripple outward from the company’s facility in Hermitage, Pennsylvania. Fortunately for you, I’m here to break things down into normal everyday English.

Public Health & Safety

The most immediate impact is on public health. Sodium hypochlorite is a corrosive chemical that requires precise handling to avoid severe injury. By omitting and altering instructions, Interstate Chemical created numerous scenarios for harm:

• Workers mixing improper concentrations: Without correct ratios for dilution, workers could easily create solutions that were too strong, increasing the risk of chemical burns and respiratory irritation, or too weak, failing to sanitize surfaces properly and creating a false sense of safety from pathogens.
• Lack of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE): The missing “AGRICULTURAL USES” box failed to direct workers to the crucial PPE requirements detailed elsewhere on the label, making it more likely that handlers would forego necessary protection.
• Unknown risks in unapproved settings: Promoting the chemical for use in spas and hot tubs is particularly reckless. Without EPA review, the potential for dangerous chemical reactions, toxic fumes in enclosed spaces, or long-term health effects on the public is completely unknown.

Environmental Degradation

Improper disposal of chemicals can devastate local ecosystems. Interstate Chemical’s label provided flawed “STORAGE AND DISPOSAL” instructions that were inconsistent with the approved text. By instructing users to simply dilute rinsate with water and discard it in a sanitary sewer, the company may have been encouraging practices that could overwhelm water treatment facilities and introduce harmful contaminants into public waterways.

A System Designed for This: Profit, Deregulation, and Power

The actions of Interstate Chemical Company are a predictable outcome of a political and economic system—neoliberal capitalism—that prioritizes profit above all else. In this framework, regulations are not seen as essential protections for public health but as burdensome red tape that impedes efficiency and cuts into the bottom line.

A company’s decision to use non-compliant labels is an economic one. Printing and ensuring compliance costs time and money.

When the penalty for getting caught is minimal, a cold calculation can be made: the risk of a small fine is worth the savings from cutting corners on safety.

This is a wholeass feature, not a bug, of a late-stage capitalistic system that outsources the cost of doing business onto the bodies of workers and the health of the environment.

Weak enforcement and a corporate culture that sees regulation as an obstacle rather than a moral obligation create the exact conditions for this type of harm to occur.

Dodging Accountability: How the Powerful Evade Justice

The resolution of this case is a masterclass in how corporations evade true accountability. Interstate Chemical Company did not have to admit to the specific factual allegations laid out by the EPA. Instead, it entered into a Consent Agreement, a negotiated settlement that allows the company to move on without a formal admission of wrongdoing.

The company was assessed a civil penalty of $27,300. For a corporation involved in the production and widespread distribution of chemicals, this amount essentially a minor business expense. It’s a fee to continue operating, far outweighed by the profits gained from its negligent practices.

This penalty sends a clear message to the industry: the cost of endangering the public is remarkably low. No individuals were held personally responsible, and the company is simply required to pay the fine and certify that it is now in compliance. The system punished the wallet, not the behavior, ensuring that the fundamental corporate calculus remains unchanged.

Reclaiming Power: Pathways to Real Change

This case demonstrates the profound inadequacy of our current regulatory system. Meaningful change requires moving beyond slaps on the wrist and addressing the root causes of corporate misconduct.

• Penalties with Teeth: Fines must be tied to a company’s revenue and profits to serve as a genuine deterrent rather than a nuisance fee. A penalty of $27,300 is an invitation to repeat the offense.
• Mandatory Admissions of Guilt: Settlements should not allow corporations to deny the facts. Forcing an admission of wrongdoing is crucial for public record and for preventing companies from portraying safety violations as mere disagreements.
• Empowering Workers and Communities: Workers need stronger protections and confidential channels to report safety violations without fear of retribution. Communities need more direct power to reject the presence of companies that have a track record of endangering public and environmental health.

Conclusion: A Story of a System, Not an Exception

The legal document detailing the violations of Interstate Chemical Company is more than just a case file. It is a window into a system that is fundamentally tilted in favor of corporate power at the expense of public safety. This story is an example of how our modern economy is designed to produce predictable victims. The missing warnings, the altered instructions, and the paltry fine are all symptoms of a much larger crisis—one where the health of our communities and our environment is treated as an externality on a corporate balance sheet.

All factual claims in this article were derived from the attached court document: U.S. EPA Docket No. FIFRA-03-2025-0130, filed on August 8, 2025.

Please visit this EPA link to see the above consent agreement with Interstate Chemical Company: https://yosemite.epa.gov/OA/RHC/EPAAdmin.nsf/Filings/98E2CFD2B6F1BC7585258CE00070307B/$File/Interstate%20Chemical%20Company_FIFRA%20CAFO_%20Aug%208%202025_Redacted.pdf