The images showing the moment when powerful pesticides were sprayed on banana plantations in Central America a few years ago had gone around the world. But at the time, workers were unaware of the repercussions on their health: today thousands are asking for compensation because pesticides say they have become sterile.
Don't store avocado like this: it's dangerous
The images showing the moment when powerful pesticides were sprayed on banana plantations in Central America a few years ago had gone around the world. But at the time, workers were unaware of the repercussions on their health: today thousands are asking for compensation because pesticides say they have become sterile.
By the thousands, they had won compensation cases in Nicaraguan courts, yet they never got a dime from multinationals like Dow Chemical, Shell Oil and Occidental Chemical (now OxyChem), the chemical companies that produced the pesticide Nemagon.
In total, an overall compensation of 805 million dollars was obtained, a figure that the three giants refused to pay, arguing that the courts of Nicaragua did not have jurisdiction for the conviction and had denied them fair trials.
Now the former workers who accuse the companies of making them sterile due to the excessive use of pesticides, are suing the producers in France, to recover precisely the compensation that has always been denied them.
Already over a thousand, including former workers and relatives, are trying to raise the money to face the judgment in the French courts and something seems to be moving. On Tuesday, a French court froze Dow France shares worth € 99 million, pending a January trial in the Paris court.
While Dow Chemical disputes the freeze, arguing that the US-based parent company did not own any capital in Dow France, which is held by Dow's other European entities, this first lawsuit could set legal precedent.
“The action is a precautionary measure to prevent Dow from moving assets out of France until trial, said François-Henri Briard, a French attorney who is part of an international legal team representing former workers and relatives. A French judge will determine whether the opinions of the court of other countries - in this case, Nicaragua - can be applied in France and in the European Union ”.
If the plaintiffs win, they will try to raise part of the $ 805 million from the Nicaraguan judgments.
"We live in a globalized world where it is easy for multinationals to hide assets in a way that does not allow for the execution of justice and judicial orders," said Briard. "This is what the US companies did in Nicaragua: they poisoned people, they were sentenced by the courts and they left without paying anything."
This situation has been talked about for years: the chemical dibromochloropropane, or DBCP, an active ingredient in Nemagon, was banned in most of the United States in 1977 after it was found to have caused infertility among thousands of male workers who had been exposed to the pesticide on the Dow, Shell and Occidental plantations in all of America.
But food farmers were forced to use Nemagon in the early 80s on banana and pineapple plantations in countries with lower environmental standards.
"He's a sperm killer," said Stuart H. Smith, a New Orleans environmental attorney who is part of the plaintiffs' legal team. "Thousands of people were knowingly endangered, because he was in fact banned."
In 1990 there were a number of related lawsuits but Dow and Shell - along with growers Dole Fruit, Del Monte Fruit and Chiquita Brands - blocked the lawsuits for the reasons we have already explained.
The French judges will now consider whether the Nicaraguan judges who tried the cases were competent and whether there was fraud or violations of due process, but in the meantime a fact remains: thousands of people have been poisoned and their lives, through fault profit has changed forever. And the dynamic cannot fail to recall that linked to glyphosate and the thousands of lawsuits that Monsanto Bayer is facing, because it is accused of causing cancers to workers who used it with its pesticide.
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Dominella Trunfio
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