Pesticides in court  

Heavy fine for dumped lindane and mercury  
On 15 October, a Somerset seed merchant company was ordered to pay a total of £70,000 (US$115,000) in fines and costs for offences connected with the devastating chemical pollution of a local stream in 1995. The case was brought by the South West England Regional Environment Agency office.
    At Exeter Crown Court, Judge Jeremy Griggs fined Bonds (Grain) Ltd of Somerton, Somerset, (owned by Mr Nic Bond) a total of £45,000 on three counts of keeping chemicals in a manner likely to cause pollution of the environment or harm to human health under Section 33 (1) (c) of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. The company was also ordered to pay prosecution costs of £25,000, after pleading guilty on all three counts.
    The incident occurred in August 1995 when up to 1,000 litres of lindane and mercury seed dressing were deliberately dumped down a drain in a disused seed mill in Somerton, which was in the process of being demolished (see PN30 p.3).
    The resulting pollution turned the local Mill Stream pink, and killed fish and other aquatic life in its path. The Environment Agency had to set up a round-the-clock clean-up operation that involved sophisticated filtering equipment specially imported from Belgium to remove the chemicals from the stream. If quick action had not been taken it is likely that the River Carey, supplied by the Mill Stream, would also have been seriously polluted.
    The pollution caused much disquiet among the local population. Local resident Margaret Chambers said: "The pollution that summer brought a sense of helplessness to local residents. The chemicals went into  the water, evaporated and then contaminated the air and the soil-worst of all we could not tell where they were."
    The incident was subject to a separate court case in July 1996 when demolition contractor Raymond Hake was found guilty of actually causing the pollution under the Water Resources Act 1991. He was fined £1,500 and ordered to do 200 hours community service, which caused consternation at the time because of the Magistrates' leniency (see PN33 p.8).
    Katherine Bryan, regional manager for the Environment Agency's South West Region was pleased with the final outcome of the Bonds (Grain) Ltd case. She concluded: "The judgement underlines how important it is for landowners to take full responsibility for the storage of chemicals and other potentially polluting materials on their land."
    John Seddon of BASIS, an independent, self-regulatory scheme for the pesticide industry, commented: "The Somerton case was a terrible disaster, and this legal judgement sends out all the right signals that should help to avert a similar occurrence in the future."

Environment Agency press release, 15 October 1997.

Prison sentence for illegal use of methyl parathion  
Lutellis Kilgore of Elyria, Ohio, was sentenced to 37 months in prison and two years of supervised release on 8 September in a US District Court in Cleveland for violating the Federal, Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act. Kilgore admitted illegally applying the insecticide methyl parathion, an organophosphate insecticide, to over 60 properties in Lorain and Elyria, Ohio (see PN36 p.21). Methyl parathion is toxic to the nervous system and is only approved in the US for outdoor agricultural use. When applied indoors, methyl parathion does not readily degrade and exposure can cause vomiting, headache, diarrhoea, and even death in humans. Kilgore's actions led to a US$20 million publicly-funded cleanup of the affected premises in Lorain and Elyria.

US EPA, 19 September 1997.

Fine for aerial applicator  
San Joaquin Helicopters, a Californian pesticide application company, was fined US$60,000 on 5 November for allowing spray drift to affect the health of numerous vineyard employees.
    About 1,100 workers were picking grapes in a large vineyard north of Bakersfield on 4 September 1996, when a fixed-wing aircraft began spraying a mixture of three pesticides on an adjacent cotton field. Workers in the vineyard became ill (most immediately), and 24 were taken to hospitals in the area.

Californian EPA Department of Pesticide Regulation, 5 November 1997.

Soaring fines for bird poisoning  
The highest fine ever in the UK for a poisoning offence involving birds has been imposed following the deaths of three red kites-all killed by the insecticide mevin-phos. An investigation carried out by the police, Pesticides Safety Directorate, English Nature, and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds resulted in a farmer being fined £13,500 (US$21,000) at Thame Magistrates Court (Oxfordshire) in May 1997 for a number of pesticide and wildlife offences. The offences included the storage of non-approved pesticides, the poisoning of a red kite and the possession of a 'poisoning kit' and other offences relating to the possession and use of illegal traps.

Campaign Against Illegal Poisoning of Wildlife, Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food, Newsletter No. 21, October 1997.

Big OP claim in Australia  
Four Australian sheep shearers won damages of A$650,000 (£285,000) for long term nerve problems caused by exposure to OP spray. The case is important because the Australian courts have accepted that acute exposure to the chemicals could cause long-term damage.

Financial Times 14 October 1997.

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 38, December 1997, page 7]