A Hong Kong judge has awarded a musician
£1.9 million (US $3.5 million) for chronic damage to his health caused by a
single exposure to an organophosphate (OP) insecticide. Elizabeth Sigmund of the
OP Information Network said the judgement, which involved the OP diazinon (made
under licence at the time by Ciba Geigy), was proof that the chemicals could
cause chronic damage through inhalation.
Judge Conrad Seagroatt accepted that the musician Kristan
Phillips, formerly principal timpanist of the Hong Kong Philharmonic orchestra,
had suffered irreversible chronic damage from a single exposure to diazinon in a
Hong Kong music hall 10 years ago. Whilst rehearsing at the Academy for
Performing Arts, musicians were affected by vapour seeping in from an adjacent
foyer where workmen in masks were spraying the insecticide. Mr Phillips
collapsed, hardly able to breathe. He suffered damage to his nervous system and
hearing which he claimed had wrecked his career.
OP manufacturers maintain that the ruling could not be a
precedent in UK courts because the product had been incorrectly used by the pest
control firm applying the product.
However Liz Sigmund said: "I think the precedent is
extremely important, as diazinon is widely used in sheep dipping," and she
believes the judgement may help sheep farmers pursuing claims in the UK.
Farmers Weekly, 8 August 1997.
[This
article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 37,
September 1997, page 7]