2006 Ivory Coast toxic waste dump by Greek shipping company Prime Marine Management Inc. and chartered by Trafigura. Trafigura desired to strip the sulfurous products out of the coker gasoline to produce naphtha, which could then be sold. Instead of paying a refinery to do this work, Trafigura used an obsolete process on board the ship called "caustic washing", in which the coker gasoline was treated with caustic soda. The process worked, and the resulting naphtha was resold for a reported profit of . The waste resulting from the caustic washing would typically include hazardous substances such as sodium hydroxide, sodium sulfide and phenols. On 2
Toxic waste creating the largest PCB spills in American history and a public health crisis that would have repercussions for generations to come. The PCB-contaminated material was eventually collected and buried in a landfill in Warren County, but citizens' opposition, including large public demonstrations, exposed the dangers of toxic waste, the fallibility of landfills then in use, and EPA regulations allowing landfills to be built on marginal, but politically acceptable sites. Warren County citizens argued that the toxic waste landfill regulations were based on the fundamental assumption that the EPA's conceptual dry-tomb landfill would contain the toxic waste. This assumption informed the