700 Affected by Pesticide Spill in Venezuela

On 26 February this year a truck carrying three tons of pesticides drove off a mountainous slope in Escaguey, Venezuela. As a result of this accident, over one thousand local residents were poisoned. The truck was delivering multiple chemicals, including parathion, paraquat, aldrin, DDT (which was banned in 1980), amidor, azcyclotin and zumileb.

    Immediately, several people went to the hospital suffering from pesticide poisoning, where hospital staff mistakenly thought that they were routine pesticide poisoning victims. (Merida, the state in which the accident took place, has the highest rate of poisonings in Venezuela.) It was not until 5 March that the hospital received notice of the accident, by which time the number of victims suffering from skin and respiratory irritations, dizziness, headaches and nausea had greatly increased. Of those examined, 78 were severely affected, 250 suffered direct exposure, and almost 700 were indirectly affected by the toxic cloud. The high number of reported poisoning victims reflects the toxicity of the spilled pesticides and the lack of resources available in the State to handle such a chemical accident.

    After the accident, local authorities waited for 30 days to take soil samples, sampled the water supplies only once, and took no air samples even though toxic gases had been released in a fire caused by the accident. Following an investigation, the Legislative Assembly for Merida and the Environment and Natural Resources Commission found these actions to be negligent. They recommended restricting the companies that are transporting and using agrochemicals in the State, increasing surveillance by State officials, and creating an emergency plan for agrochemical accidents.

Revista La Era Agricola (Venezuela), May-June 1993, No. 17. Report by the Environment and Natural Resources Commission for the Legislative Assembly for the State of Merida, Republic of Venezuela, ‘Contaminacion por plaguicidas, Escaguey– Municipio Rangel’, 15 April, 1993.  Elsa Nivia, RAPALMIRA, Colombia, and PANUPS, US.

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No.21,September 1993, page 13]