Poisoned Plantations

Ex-workers in Nicaraguan banana fields sue U.S. firms over illnesses linked to toxic fumigant

Mike Lanchin / SF Chronicle 15mar01

 

	Chiquita and Standard Fruit (the latter owned by Dole Fresh Fruit Co.) and Dow, Occidental and Shell Oil, the chemical companies that produced DBCP.
	Esmeralda Peralta held her son, who she believes was harmed by toxins sprayed to kill insects on banana fields where she worked. Photo by Oswaldo Rivas, special to the Chronicle
	Juan Carlos Picado, 23, was severely affected by toxic fumigants before he was born, doctors told his mother. Photo by Oswaldo Rivas, special to the Chronicle

El Viejo, Nicaragua  --  At first glance, Juan Carlos Picado hardly looks his age.

He cannot walk, talk, feed or bathe himself. His days are spent propped up in a wooden chair in a dirt yard in this squalid village six miles from the provincial city of Chinandega. His tiny frame and skeletal legs belie the fact that he is 23 years old.

"For the first two months of his life, he seemed fine," said his mother, Francisca Picado, who for 15 years toiled on a banana plantation then managed by Standard Fruit Co., a California firm. "But a year passed and he wouldn't eat, he didn't grow. We had no idea what was happening."

It was only after her husband died of cancer that doctors revealed their suspicions: The pesticide DBCP (or dibromochloropropane), regularly sprayed during the 1960s and 1970s to combat insects that prey on bananas, probably caused her husband's death and damaged her son's nervous system when she worked during pregnancy.

Within the past 25 years, 103 former plantation workers in Nicaragua and their offspring have reportedly died and 22,000 are seriously ill as a result of regular contact with the toxic fumigant, which is now classified as "extremely hazardous" by the World Health Organization.

Late last month, 130 victims filed a $134 million lawsuit in a Managua court against their former U.S. employers -- Chiquita and Standard Fruit (the latter owned by Dole Fresh Fruit Co.) and Dow, Occidental and Shell Oil, the chemical companies that produced DBCP.

The individual lawsuits seek compensation for such maladies as infertility, cancer, damage to the liver and kidneys, and birth defects. The 130 claimants are the first of 3,000 and are represented by Engstrom, Lipscomb & Lack, the Los Angeles law firm of 100 employees that helped the renowned Erin Brockovich win the water pollution case depicted in the Oscar-nominated movie.

"We will file on a rolling basis," said attorney Walter J. Lack. "Every 60 days, there will be a new batch."

If the companies opt not to defend themselves in Nicaragua -- they have 120 days to respond -- the lawsuit is likely to be refiled in the United States, Lack said.

Lawyers for the claimants will argue that the foreign companies knew about the pesticide's potentially harmful effects and failed to provide adequate protection.

"It would have been different if they were completely ignorant of the effects of DBCP, but they knew," said Walter Gutierrez, the victims' legal representative in Nicaragua.

Lawyers for the banana and chemical companies will argue that sterility in males is a common occurrence and caused by a variety of factors. They will also contend that banana workers rotate jobs with enough frequency that long- term exposure to DBCP would have been rare.

Above all, the chemical companies will stress that all shipping invoices clearly outlined safety procedures and cautioned the user against breathing the product or getting it on the skin. Hence, it was the fruit companies' fault for not warning the workers.

"Dow freely concedes that excessive exposure to DBCP, either through inhalation or dermal exposure, will affect male fertility," said Scot Wheeler, Dow Chemical Co.'s public affairs manager.

"Unfortunately, many of the users and purchasers of DBCP failed to follow the warning labels," he said. "In our view, Dow should not be liable for their improper conduct."

In a written statement, Shell Oil told The Chronicle that it ceased production of the pesticide in 1977 and "believes that none of its DBCP product was used at any Standard Fruit Plantation or any other plantation in Nicaragua at any time. . . . There are no scientific reports attributing death to the occupational application of DBCP."

DBCP is described as a potentially carcinogenic agent by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The pesticide was first manufactured by Dow and Shell in the 1950s to combat microscopic worms that attack banana plants. In 1964, it was licensed under the brand names Fumazone and Nemagon.

It was widely used on plantations owned by Dole, Del Monte, Chiquita and Standard Fruit. At one point, the manufacturers were exporting 24 million pounds of DBCP annually.

According to the Pesticide Action Network in San Francisco, toxicologists noted early on that DBCP caused male sterility in rats and atrophied the testicles of rabbits and monkeys.

"Although further research should have been undertaken, there was great pressure to begin sales of DBCP," Lori Ann Thrupp, then a research fellow in the Energy and Resources Program at the University of California at Berkeley, wrote in a 1989 article. "Company directors were anxious to reap the profits, and farmers were eager to use this powerful product."

In 1977, the compound was banned in California after 35 employees at a DBCP plant in Occidental were found to be sterile, the first known human sterility cases linked to the fumigant. Two years later, the EPA banned its use for good in the United States, and most banana companies stopped using it at that time.

Also in 1979, Francisca Picado gave up working long hours packing bananas to look after her son. She then began suffering migraine headaches and shooting pains, which bother her to this day. Picado and her family eventually moved in with her five sisters and their children, sharing the tin-roofed, cardboard-walled shack that their father had left them.

Picado said women typically stripped, cleaned and packed the bananas, while men picked the fruit. DBCP was sprayed at night by what locals called "the pistol," a long sprinkler that dispersed the chemical in all directions.

When workers arrived at daybreak, they passed through rows of bananas that had been sprayed the previous night. Everyone was exposed, said Vitorino Espinoza, leader of an association of former banana workers.

"When the fruit came off the trees, it was dripping with the stuff," he said. "We all touched it with our hands. No one had gloves, like they do now."

Similar stories are heard across Nicaragua.

In Chinandega, Graciela Rodriguez said she lost her husband and 11-year-old son to cancer. Rodriguez, 51, who packed bananas from 1972 to 1980, said her son often played on the plantation while she worked.

Nicolasa Caballero, 55, who worked for banana companies from 1973 to 1988, has large gaping wounds on both legs. In 1985, she lost her 6-month-old son, Reinaldo. Doctors were unable to explain the cause of death, and she has been unable to have more children.

Proving the link between DBCP and these kinds of illness will be crucial to the victims' lawsuit against Dow, Shell and Standard Fruit. The latter left Nicaragua in 1982.

"The easiest case may be linking sterility to the pesticide, because of precedents," said Charles Siegel, a Texas lawyer who specializes in environmental lawsuits. "But claims beyond that are more difficult to prove."

In 1998, Siegel successfully negotiated a $45 million out-of-court settlement with four chemical corporations -- Amvac, Dow, Occidental and Shell -- for 26,000 claimants from 11 countries who demanded compensation for permanent sterility linked to DBCP exposure.

But time is not on the side of Picado and other pesticide victims.

"Don't you think it is right that justice be done?" she asked. "Don't you think I deserve that?"