{"id":31421,"date":"2022-08-05T00:01:43","date_gmt":"2022-08-05T04:01:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beyondpesticides.org\/dailynewsblog\/?p=31421"},"modified":"2022-08-04T12:14:10","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T16:14:10","slug":"u-s-exportation-of-banned-and-highly-restricted-pesticides-continues-to-inflict-serious-harm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beyondpesticides.org\/dailynewsblog\/2022\/08\/u-s-exportation-of-banned-and-highly-restricted-pesticides-continues-to-inflict-serious-harm\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Exportation of Banned and Highly Restricted Pesticides Continues to Inflict Serious Harm"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

(Beyond Pesticides<\/em>, August 5, 2022)\u00a0A terrible saga of environmental injustice \u2014 and of grieving couples who wanted children but could not have them \u2014 is getting new attention via the BBC\u2019s (British Broadcasting Corporation\u2019s) recent coverage<\/a> of Di-bromochloropropane<\/a> (DBCP) exposures and impacts on banana plantation workers in multiple Latin American countries. A significant number of those male workers became sterile, and many charge that their exposures to DBCP in the 1970s was responsible. A 1979 ban on uses of DBCP on the U.S. mainland by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did not immediately stop manufacturers from exporting the toxic insecticide to (primarily) Central American countries, nor did it stop U.S. fruit companies operating there from using it. Beyond Pesticides wrote<\/a> in 2020 about the damaging and what some call unethical practice of allowing corporate export of domestically banned pesticides \u2014 which practice continues in the U.S.<\/p>\r\n

This BBC investigative report comes on the heels of a piece in The Lancet<\/em>, United States and United Nations pesticide policies: Environmental violence against the Yaqui indigenous nation<\/a>, that catalogues the abuse of pesticide export policies on indigenous peoples. The piece finds: \u201cThe\u00a0Federal\u00a0Insecticide<\/a>, Fungicide, and\u00a0Rodenticide<\/a>\u00a0Act (FIFRA) is a U.S. statute that allows \u201cpesticides\u00a0that are not approved \u2013 or registered \u2013 for use in the U.S.\u201d to be manufactured in the U.S. and exported elsewhere. The UN Rotterdam Convention also allows the global exportation of \u201cbanned pesticides.\u201d The ongoing exportation of banned pesticides leads to disproportionately high rates of morbidity and mortality, most notably in Indigenous women and children.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

The authors cite the extent of the export issue from the U.S.: \u201cExport data from U.S. ports found that over 27 million pounds of pesticides forbidden for use domestically were shipped at an average of 32 thousand pounds per day.1<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0In 2012, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that banned pesticides were being produced in 23 U.S. states.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

DBCP was commonly used to kill microscopic nematodes that damage banana plants. The compound was manufactured and sold in the 1970s by U.S. companies, primarily under the brand names Fumazone (Dow Chemical Company) and Nemagon (Shell Chemical Company); other iterations were manufactured by Occidental Chemical Corporation and AMVAC. In the 1960s, Dole Fruit (then Standard Fruit) started using DBCP on banana crops in Latin America; Chiquita and Del Monte followed suit in the early 1970s.<\/p>\r\n

By 1977, EPA had restricted use of the compound on 19 mainland crops, and allowed its use on other crops only within very narrow conditions, and with use of respirators and other protective gear for workers. It then cancelled the registration for DBCP for all uses in this country in 1979 (except for that on pineapple crops in Hawai\u2019i, which was halted in 1985). According to the BBC<\/a>, \u201cEven though Shell and Dow stopped manufacturing DBCP in 1977, they continued legal exports of their unused stocks of the pesticide to several Central American countries.\u201d Dow and Shell were able, legally, to offload remaining stocks of the insecticide.<\/p>\r\n

Shell says<\/a> it \u201chad already ceased all sale or manufacture of Nemagon before the EPA\u201d ban; Dow says that \u201cevery sale or shipment of DBCP occurred well before October 1979\u201d (when the EPA cancelled DBCP\u2019s registration). Occidental and AMVAC sold DBCP to Panama until 1979; AMVAC continued to sell to Panama as late as 1985. An Occidental officer said, \u201cThe sales and uses upon which you are focused date back 40-plus years. . . . According to records that I have seen, the company apparently sold DBCP in bulk to distributors who, in turn, sold the goods into various LatAm [Latin American] countries. The final destination for these goods was often unclear.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

According to BBC reporting<\/a>, tens of thousands of banana industry workers from Panama, Guatemala, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica have brought litigation against both the manufacturers of DBCP and the companies that used it in their Latin American operations (Dole, Del Monte, and Chiquita). Documents from the lawsuits show that, as early as the 1950s, internal animal studies by Dow and Shell evidenced testicular atrophy and reduced sperm counts due to DBCP exposures. One of the investigators in those studies, Dr. Charles Hine, wrote in a draft report for U.S. regulators that, \u201crepeated exposure to DBCP could affect human reproduction.\u201d Yet the compound was approved for use in 1964 \u2014 with no indication on its label that it could represent a threat to male fertility.<\/p>\r\n

For its part, Dow continues to insist<\/a> that \u201cthe dose makes the poison,\u201d and that \u201cLow dose, outdoor, or intermittent exposures will not affect male fertility.\u201d In a statement to the BBC, a Dow spokesperson said that \u201cDBCP had been \u2018shown to possibly affect reproductive function of some male workers who handled it directly in very high doses at manufacturing plants.\u2019 . . . [But] \u201cagricultural workers would have potentially experienced significantly lower doses, and no studies of agricultural workers have shown a similar effect from working with DBCP.\u201d Its website states that “there is no credible scientific evidence that Dole’s use of DBCP on banana farms caused any of the injuries claimed in any of the DBCP lawsuits, including sterility.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Beyond Pesticides suggests that the folks at Dow take a look at the 2019 study by J. Marino, et al.<\/a>, which concluded that its research \u201cevidence suggests that DBCP has significant and occasionally permanent effects on semen parameter and fertility in exposed men.\u201d Or perhaps consider the 2018 research by K. McAbbe, et al<\/a>., which states flatly, \u201cDBCP is a banned nematicide that has been shown to cause male\u00a0infertility.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Workers have repeatedly sought justice in U.S. courts, to no lasting avail. The BBC reports<\/a> that \u201cthere has been only one case in which a U.S. court considered whether the pesticide caused sterility\u201d \u2014 the central harm for which plaintiffs have repeatedly sought compensation, often with the hope of securing better healthcare with such funds. In 2007<\/a>, a group of Nicaraguan litigants was awarded $2.5 million in punitive damages in a case charging sterility as an outcome of exposures. But in 2010<\/a>, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge overturned that ruling, saying that the company had been a victim of fraud related to plaintiffs\u2019 alleged witness tampering.<\/p>\r\n

The BBC article asserts<\/a>: \u201cTo date, there have been no successful litigations in the U.S by banana workers. Their cases have been dismissed on procedural matters or the companies have settled out of court, making payments to some plaintiffs, but not accepting liability. There are currently just two active cases in the U.S. Scott Hendler, the lawyer pursuing them on behalf of workers from Guatemala, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Panama, says the companies are \u2018resorting to procedural matters again and again.\u2019 He wants a jury to see the evidence. \u2018There is no question that DBCP can cause sterility,\u2019 he says. \u2018The question is whether each of these individual plaintiffs sustained sufficient exposure in their own right to be a substantial factor in causing their own infertility.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Beyond Pesticides has covered<\/a> some of the history of litigation related to DBCP:<\/p>\r\n