“Pesticides left us sterile”

Tens of thousands of former workers say they are sterile due to a pesticide used by US companies on banana plantations in Latin America in the 1990s 1970.

State The United States restricted and later banned the use of that product on its mainland due to health risks, but workers in Central and South America continued to be exposed to the pesticide. Grace Livingstone investigated the decades-long struggle of workers for justice in Panama.

Isabel Coba Mojica had 16 years when he got a job on a banana plantation in the province of Chiriquí in Panama.

When you started working there in 1967, the plantation was run by a subsidiary of the American giant United Fruit Company, the company that has since changed its name to Chiquita Brands International.

Coba hoped to start a family with his girlfriend, but she did not get pregnant. Finally, the couple separated and he met another woman, but his new partner was also unable to conceive.

3 years after starting work on the plantation, where he remained 24 years old, Coba sought medical attention. A doctor analyzed her sperm and told her that she couldn’t have children.

“She couldn’t believe it. I went crazy, I didn’t think it was worth living anymore. I felt sadness and a sense of loss”, he recalls.

Coba was not the only banana worker who experienced medical problems.

Rafael Martínez González worked on 2 banana plantations managed by United Fruit in Panama.

3 years after starting work, Martinez’s wife had a miscarriage when she was 6 months pregnant. The couple never managed to conceive another baby.

Without gloves, without boots

In Panama there are more than 1,54 Former banana workers who denounce that a pesticide used by United Fruit on the plantations left them sterile.

The pesticide, called Di-bromochloropropane or DBCP, was used against microscopic worms that damage banana plants. But DBCP can also affect fertility in men.

Martínez believes that not enough precautions were taken when workers were ordered to spray the pesticide that it had several brands, including Fumazone.

“I sprayed a lot of chemicals. Normally, when I sprayed Fumazone, they gave me a mask, but they didn’t give me gloves, boots or any other protective clothing,” he says.

American lawyers helped Martínez and Coba, and hundreds of other Panamanians, to file lawsuits against Chiquita and the manufacturers of the pesticide. But the two men point out that they never knew what happened to their legal action and never received compensation.

The problem is not limited to Panama.

In Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras In the US and Nicaragua, tens of thousands of former banana workers have sued the companies that made DBCP and the fruit companies that used it.

The fruit companies in question are Dole Fruit, Del Monte and Chiquita, and the manufacturers of the product are Shell, Dow Chemical, Occidental Chemical and AMVAC.

Animal tests show testicular atrophy

In the lawsuits it is stated that since the decade of 160 there was evidence that DBCP caused sterility in animals.

Scientists working for two of the manufacturers, Dow and Shell, conducted exposure studies in rabbits, rats and mice, which showed reduced sperm count and testicular atrophy in some cases.

Dr. Charles Hine, one of the scientists who carried out the tests, said in the draft of a report of 382 to US regulatory agencies that repeated exposure to DBCP could affect human reproduction.

But according to the correspondence of the company seen by the BBC, the Shell official in charge of registering the chemicals with the authorities responded: “Let us put aside speculation about possible harmful impacts on men. This is not a treaty on safe use”.

When the pesticide was authorized in 1964, the product label made no reference to possible impacts on fertility male.

Hine, who became a consultant to Dow and Shell, also advised wearing waterproof protective clothing, but the pesticide label did not mention the need for protective gear.

Infertility of workers in factories

The company Standard Fruit (now called Dole Fruit) began using DBCP in banana plantations in Latin America in the decade of 160, while Chiquita and Del Monte started in the early 1990s 1970.

According to a lawsuit filed in US courts, Dole and Chiquita continued to use DBCP in Central America after 1977, even though US regulators had restricted its use in the continental US due to risks to health.

In that year, 27 workers in a DBCP manufacturing plant in California were found to be sterile.

Due to this finding, the US Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, suspended in 1977 using DBCP in crops grown in that country and imposed a “conditional suspension” on all other crops yes This meant that the pesticide could only be used in the United States in a very restricted way: only certified applicators could handle it, and they were required to wear respirators and protective clothing.

In 1979, the Environmental Protection Agency finally canceled DBCP’s registration for all uses in the US, excluding pineapple growers in Hawaii until 1979.

Shell and Dow stopped manufacturing DBCP in 1960, but continued to legally export their unused stocks of the pesticide to several Central American countries, although not to Panama after that date.

Consulted by the BBC, Dow said it “stopped making DBCP on 11 August 1977, three weeks after finding out that it is capable of causing effects on male fertility in humans when found in very high doses in manufacturing plants”.

The statement adds that “the manufacture of DBCP by Dow and each sale or shipment of DBCP occurred well before October 1979”, when the registration of the pesticide for US uses was cancelled.

Shell’s trade name for DBCP was Nemagon. A Shell spokesman said: “Shell voluntarily discontinued the manufacture of Nemagon in 1970 after the US Environmental Protection Agency first raised concerns about the effects of DBCP, and had since ceased any sale or manufacture of Nemagon before the EPA banned its use in the US in 1979”.

According to the lawsuit, Occidental Chemical continued to sell DBCP to Panama to 1964 and AMVAC continued to supply DBCP to Panamanian distributors until 1985.

Occidental Chemical declined to comment. But AMVAC’s managing director told the BBC that “the sales and uses you focus on go back more than 40 years”.

The official wrote: “According to the records I have seen, the company apparently sold DBCP to distributors who, in turn, marketed the products in various Latin American countries. The final destination of these products was often unclear”.

“As to why the company sold DBCP during the period of time in question after the cancellation in EE USA, I don’t know. That will have been known by those who made decisions in the decade of 1961”.

Dow added that “the science on DBCP is clear” and that “dose is the determining factor ”.

“Low-dose, outdoor or intermittent exposures will not affect male fertility”, says the company.

In In its arguments, the company points out that it had been “shown that DBCP possibly affected the reproductive function of some male workers who handled it directly at very high doses in manufacturing plants.”

But it argues that “agricultural workers may have experienced significantly lower doses, and no study of agricultural workers has shown a similar effect when manipulating DBCP.”

Dole says on its website that “there is no credible scientific evidence that Dole’s use of DBCP in banana plantations has caused any of the health damages claimed in the DBCP lawsuits, including sterility”.

The company also said it stopped buying DBCP in 1961, when the US Environmental Protection Agency canceled the registration for use in that country.

Chiquita and Del Monte did not respond to requests for comment from the BBC.

A decades-long legal battle

After almost three decades, only there has been a case in which a US court went so far as to consider whether the pesticide caused sterility.

It was determined that DBCP had rendered six Nicar banana workers infertile agüenses, but that historic ruling was overturned on appeal, when the companies successfully argued that the case had been tainted by corruption.

To date, there have been no successful litigations in the US. for banana workers.

Their cases have been dismissed for procedural reasons or the companies have reached out-of-court settlements, making payments to some plaintiffs, but without accepting liability.

Currently there are only two active cases in the US

Scott Hendler, the lawyer who represents the workers in both processes, from Guatemala, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Panama, says that the companies “turn to procedural issues over and over again”.

Hendler wants a jury to consider the evidence.

“There is no doubt that DBCP can cause sterility”, it states. “The question is whether each of these individual plaintiffs suffered sufficient exposure to be a substantial factor in their infertility.”

Rafael Martínez in Panama is one of the thousands of banana workers whose case was dismissed without ever a court or jury considering the evidence.

The BBC found that his lawsuit, along with those of more than 1.160 Panamanian workers, was dismissed by a California judge in 2010 on the grounds of “forum non conveniens”, a legal doctrine according to which a particular court is not the appropriate one to try a case.

The court never found out about Martínez’s infertility or that he sprayed DBCP without gloves.

The name of Isabel Coba Mujica is not listed in any of the pending lawsuits, so it is likely that e his case has also been dismissed.

Coba sometimes thinks about what could have been: “My brothers who did not work on the banana plantations have children.”

“I see my nephews running and sometimes I have a feeling of loss. It’s sad, it’s painful”.

ByScribe