California IN BRIEF : SAN FRANCISCO : Transformers With PCBs to Be Removed

University of California regents have agreed to pay a $150,000 fine and remove electrical transformers that contain cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from campuses at Los Angeles, Irvine, Riverside, San Diego, Santa Cruz and Davis. The settlement was announced in San Francisco by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which said the university had failed to remove the transformers by an Oct. 1, 1990, deadline in the federal Toxic Substances Control Act. PCBs once were widely used as insulating fluid in electrical equipment. The university will spend $15 million to remove the transformers. Similar equipment was removed earlier from campuses at Berkeley, Santa Barbara and San Francisco.