Plastics, pesticides, and other POPs
The "Circle of Poison"
READ: "Deadly Pesticide Circle Of Poison," 1994, National Campaign for Pesticide Policy Reform. [1,000 words]
OPTIONAL to browse for main ideas: "Exporting Risk: Pesticide Exports from U.S. Ports," Carl Smith, Global Pesticide Campaigner, June 1998, v. 8, n. 2 (published by Pesticide Action Network North America). (A longer Fasenet report, from which this article is drawn, is available online.) [2,500 words]
Optional online resources about the
circle of poison
"The Boomerang Crime," Mark Dowie, Mother Jones, November 1979
-- Classic article, highly recommended: It comes home in your coffee, your bananas... 
[3,100
words, including continuation
page]
"Update: Pesticide Dumping Continues; Leahy to Reintroduce Circle of Poison
Bill," Suzie Larsen, Mother Jones, 21 July 1998. [1,200 words]
"Velsicol Ceases Production of Chlordane and Heptachlor" -- finally, in
1997...
"The Global Politics of Pesticide Use in Brazil," Danielle Knight, Z
Magazine, January 1997.
"Forbidden Fruit; Illegal Pesticides in the U.S. Food Supply," Susan
Elderkin and others, 1995, Environmental Working Group.
"The Corporate Crime of the Century," Mark Dowie, Mother Jones,
November 1979 -- "It's called dumping: When the U.S. government forces a dangerous
drug, pesticide or other product off the domestic market, the manufacturer then sells that
same product -- frequently with the direct support of the State Department -- throughout
the rest of the world."
"Where Are They Now?," Laurel Druley and Keith Hammond, Mother Jones, 4
November 1997 -- An investigation-- eighteen years later-- into what happened to dangerous
products dumped by the U.S., including these conclusions:
In 1977 dibromochloropropane (DBCP), a pesticide used mostly on banana farms, was banned provisionally in the U.S. after it was found to cause blindness, sterility, and cancer; in 1979 the ban was made permanent. Its manufacturers-- Dow Chemical, Shell Oil, and Occidental Chemical-- were left with huge superfluous quantities of DBCP which they couldn't sell in the U.S. So guess where they sold it? The infertility gods took a trip to Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Central and South America-- to banana republics and other Third World countries free from strict environmental protection laws.
Today some 25,000 plantation workers from at least 12 countries are suing the U.S. pesticide makers and fruit growers they say caused their sterility, birth defects, and other illnesses. But justice has proved elusive: The manufacturers have succeeded in getting most cases dismissed back to the plaintiffs' home countries, where damages are expected to be much lower. When Bill Clinton visited Costa Rica in May, banana workers there pleaded with him to let them to sue the U.S. companies in U.S. courts.
So far, workers have had slightly more success suing the fruit companies who employed them, including Del Monte Fruit, Chiquita Brands, Dole Food, and Standard Fruit Company. In June, Standard Fruit agreed to pay $22 million to compensate 3,000 workers in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and the Philippines, who were directed to use DBCP on pineapple and banana plantations without any warnings, training, or protective clothing.
"Chiquita Secrets Revealed," Lawrence K. Beaupre, Cincinnati Enquirer,
series 3-28 May 1998 -- The text of the controversial investigative report, subsequently
disavowed by the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Under intense pressure from Chiquita (CBI), which threatened to sue, the Enquirer’s owners disavowed the story, paid Chiquita a large fine, wrote a front-page apology and fired the story’s lead reporter Mike Gallagher. Gallagher, a prize-winning veteran reporter, was accused of misrepresenting the source of internal CBI voicemail tapes. Gallaher claimed his source was “a high ranking Chiquita executive.” The Enquirer concluded that Gallagher had stolen the tapes. Enquirer publisher Harry M. Whipple and editor Lawrence K. Beaupre apologized to Chiquita for the reporter’s “alleged unethical and unlawful conduct” and for the expos�s “untrue conclusions.” The subsequent media uproar masked some important facts: The validity of the tapes (which comprised only a small portion of the extensive report on CBI’s activities) was never questioned nor has Chiquita challenged the validity of the disclosures in the Enquirer’s expose. The Cincinnati Enquirer disowned their report and quickly removed it from their website in an attempt to erase it from the public record. REF
"Newspaper apologizes to Chiquita" (28 June 1998)
"Chiquita banana, quite possibly, the world's perfect food" -- the
website of Chiquita Brands, Inc.
"Bananas Or The Environment: A Fair Trade?,"
Living on Earth, 12 March 1999
(transcript)
RealAudio
"Bananas: The Facts," New Internationalist, Issue 317, October 1999 --
"The ‘Big Three’ banana corporations-- Chiquita, Dole and Del Monte--
control two-thirds of world banana exports. Plantations in Central America apply 30
kilograms of active ingredients [of chemicals] per hectare per year-- more than ten times
the average for intensive agriculture in industrialized countries." Also discusses
environmental destruction from banana-growing.
"Environmental and Human Health Issues of Banana Production in Costa Rica," A
Project By Casey Steinberg at University of Vermont, April 1998
"OECD toxic waste exports banned under new agreement," Chakravarthi
Raghavan, Third World Network -- "The United States... has been lobbying OECD and
non-OECD governments against the ban..."
Print Resources
Weir, David, and Mark Shapiro. 1981. Circle of
Poison. San Francisco: Institute for Food and Development Policy. [in UWSP libr.]
Thomas Detwyler maintains this page (tdetwyle@uwsp.edu)
Last updated 8 June 2001