A former top executive of Juul is alleging that the e-cigarette giant sold at least one million contaminated mint-flavored nicotine pods — and refused to recall them when told about the problem in March.

In a lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California on Tuesday, Siddharth Breja, who was senior vice president for global finance, claims he was fired on March 21 in retaliation for whistle-blowing and objecting to the shipment of the contaminated and expired pods and other illegal and unsafe conduct that “has jeopardized and continues to jeopardize public health and safety and the lives of millions of consumers, many of them children and teens.”

[New York and California are the latest states to sue Juul over its marketing of vaping products to young people.]

Mr. Breja detailed a culture of indifference to safety and quality-control issues among top executives at the company and quoted the then-chief executive Kevin Burns saying at a meeting in February: “Half our customers are drunk and vaping” and wouldn’t “notice the quality of our pod s.”