Earlier this month, a Paris courtroom dismissed an investigation of mass poisoning as a consequence of the usage of Chlordecone within the French West Indies (chlordecone is healthier recognized in the US below the model identify Kepone). Listed here are excerpts from Danica Coto’s “Paris courtroom offers blow to French Caribbean pesticide battle” (Related Press). [Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.]
Almost 20 years after Caribbean islanders sued to carry the French authorities criminally answerable for the banana trade’s prolonged use of a banned pesticide in Martinique and Guadeloupe, a panel of judges has dismissed their case, ruling that it’s too onerous to find out who’s guilty for acts dedicated so way back.
The judges in Paris described the usage of chlordecone from 1973-1993 as a scandalous “environmental assault whose human, financial and social penalties have an effect on and can have an effect on for a few years the day by day lifetime of the inhabitants” of the 2 French Caribbean islands. However additionally they asserted that even within the Nineties, scientists had not established hyperlinks between chlordecone and sicknesses in folks.
“How dare they write such a historic and scientific untruth,” Christophe Lèguevaques, an legal professional concerned within the case, stated in a press release issued Thursday.
Chlordecone, often known as kepone, was patented within the Nineteen Fifties by scientists working for Allied Chemical, a U.S. firm based mostly in New Jersey now referred to as Allied Company, and thousands and thousands of kilos of the pesticide have been produced, practically all of it exported to be used exterior the US.
The U.S. authorities banned the pesticide in 1976, a yr after the Virginia well being division completely shut down a Life Science Merchandise chemical plant in Hopewell, Va., whose employees developed slurred speech and different neurological issues blamed on the pesticide.
Nonetheless, chlordecone was legally marketed in France from 1981 till the federal government banned it in 1990, and its use continued for 3 extra years after that in Guadeloupe and Martinique to kill the banana weevil below an exemption granted by the French authorities. A long time later, it continues to infect the islands’ soil and water.
The French authorities estimates that greater than 90% of adults have been uncovered to chlordecone on each islands, whose mixed populations complete some 750,000 inhabitants. Amongst quite a lot of illnesses, chlordecone is related to an elevated danger of prostate most cancers, and these islanders undergo prostate most cancers at among the many highest charges on the planet, French most cancers researchers say. Different French analysis hyperlinks chlordecone publicity to preterm births.
“It’s unthinkable that these accountable die with out being held accountable,” Lèguevaques stated, including that he would urge his purchasers to attraction the Jan. 2 ruling by the nationwide courtroom for public well being disputes. Different plaintiffs within the 2006 case embody the Paris-based environmental group Générations Futures, which additionally plans to attraction. [. . .]
Ruling in June in a separate lawsuit filed by activists, organizations and victims, the central courtroom in Paris discovered the French authorities responsible of wrongful negligence involving the usage of chlordecone however denied compensation to these affected, a call that outraged many. [. . .]
For full article, see https://apnews.com/article/health-france-government-paris-mens-caribbean-2b519f0e654db627cdaac672897cd8ae
For article in French, see https://www.france24.com/fr/france/20230105-chlordpercentC3percentA9cone-aux-antilles-la-justice-prononce-un-non-lieu-mais-reconnapercentC3percentAEt-un-scandale-sanitaire
Additionally see https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20230106-paris-court-dismisses-probe-into-mass-poisioning-of-french-west-indies and our earlier posts https://repeatingislands.com/2020/11/20/the-caribbean-islands-poisoned-by-a-carcinogenic-pesticide and https://repeatingislands.com/2019/10/26/pesticide-poisoned-french-paradise-islands-in-caribbean