Nicaraguan banana workers win compensation from US companies   

In December 2002, a Nicaraguan judge ordered three US companies, Dow Chemical, Shell Oil and Standard Fruit, to pay US$490 million to 583 banana workers(1). The judgment is part of a long-running court case by thousands of Central American banana workers seeking compensation from exposure to the pesticide Nemagon. 

For many years Central American banana workers used a proven carcinogen. Nemagon contained an extremely hazardous pesticide, DBCP (dibromochloropropane) used as a fumigant against nematodes. After DBCP was shown to cause cancer and sterility in laboratory animals and an increased risk of cancer in humans, the manufacturers Shell Oil and Dow Chemicals continued to sell and export the product. The pesticide is now widely banned, as long ago as 1977 in the US, and is listed as obsolete by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
    In 1977, 60 workers in California making the pesticide were found to be sterile. They sued and were paid sums of up to $2.3 million for their injuries(2). The US Environmental Protection Agency banned DBCP in 1977. The Costa Rican government prohibited its import in 1979, but export from the US to banana growing countries continued until 1988(3). After the Costa Rican ban, Standard Fruit exported about 180,000 litres to Honduras, where managers continued to use it without fully informing workers of the dangers(4). 
    A lawyer for the Nicaraguan workers called the December court ruling historic. However, a Dow Chemical spokesman called the judgment unenforceable because the ruling was ‘based on a law passed in Nicaragua that its own attorney general has called unconstitutional.’’ This is in reference to a 2001 Nicaraguan law intended to help DBCP victims bring suit against the foreign companies responsible for their injuries(5). 
In 1993, more than 16,000 banana plantation workers from Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Philippines filed a class-action lawsuit in Texas against US fruit and chemical companies for alleged illnesses as a result of exposure to chemicals. The companies, including Chiquita, Dole and Del Monte, agreed to pay a total of $41.5 million in 1997 to those who proved they were sterile. Erika Rosenthal, legal advisor for Pesticide Action Network Latin America states, ‘There should be global access to justice for citizens injured abroad by the products or services of US corporations’(6). The use of the legal doctrine of forum non conveniens (which was not recognised in Texas at the time of the 1993 case) protects US corporations from such claims.
    Continuing to employ delaying tactics, the companies have prevented a final decision and compensation for Central American workers for over ten years. There are likely to remain many unknown victims of DBCP. (BD)

References
1. Associated Press 14 December 2002.
2. Pesticide Hazards in Costa Rica: DBCB in Costa Rica, TED Case Studies, Case No 197, www.american.edu/TED/COSTPEST.HTM.
3. Costa Rica, Thematic Report. For the record, Vol 4, UN Human Rights System, 1999.
4. Van Arsdale C, Banana Development in Costa Rica, Costa Rican Audubon Society (undated).
5. Banana workers win Against Dow, Shell and Standard Fruit, Pesticide Action Network Updates Service (PANUPS), 6 January 2003.
6. Ibid.

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 59, March 2003, page 11]