PANUPS: Tribunal Investigates Children's Pesticide Poisoning

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Fri, 09 Dec 2005 21:43:06 GMT

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PANUPS: Tribunal Investigates Children's Pesticide Poisoning

 

 

Tribunal Investigates Children's Pesticide Poisoning

A Special Report for The International Day of No Pesticide Use*

December 9, 2005

 

When twenty four children in a village in Peru die after ingesting a

toxic pesticide, who bears responsibility? The Citizens Tribunal on

the Tauccamarca Case has found the Bayer chemical company responsible

for violating international safety standards, and the Peruvian

government responsible for failing to protect the human rights and

physical safety of its poorest and most vulnerable citizens.

 

High in the Peruvian Andes in the windswept town of Tauccamarca,

twenty four of the village's forty eight schoolchildren died in 1999

after drinking a milk substitute contaminated with methyl parathion.

Methyl parathion is a highly toxic organophosphate pesticide sold in

Peru by Bayer under the trade name Folidol. The police investigation

found that a village woman had mixed the white powdered pesticide into

a bag of government-supplied powdered milk substitute and placed it in

the entry way to her home with the intention of killing a dog that was

chasing her chickens.

 

Two children passing her house on the way to school saw the open bag

of powdered milk, and unaware that it was contaminated (methyl

parathion does not have a strong chemical odor), brought it to school

where it was served at breakfast. The results were tragic.

 

When the students began to foam at the mouth and writhe in pain,

nearby parents ran to the school to carry their children down the

mountain to the nearest health post, an hour's walk from the village.

Over half of the children died in their parents' arms before reaching

help. Preliminary evaluations confirm that the surviving children will

suffer long-term developmental and neurological consequences that are

common in cases of organophosphate poisoning.

 

The Tauccamarca families have repeatedly attempted to bring the case

to official attention since that horrible day, to secure medical

attention for the surviving children and justice for those who died.

The parents are seeking to ensure that extremely toxic pesticides like

methyl parathion are no longer allowed to be sold freely throughout

the countryside, where poverty and illiteracy make " safe use " of such

poisons virtually impossible. The families' primary goal is to ensure

that tragedies like Tauccamarca never occur again in Peru. To date,

six years after the poisonings, neither the government nor Bayer has

provided the families with any assistance.

 

To support the Tauccamarca community and investigate Bayer's and the

Peruvian government's lack of action and failure to accept

responsibility, Peru's Pesticide Action Network organization (known by

its Spanish acronym RAAA) organized the Tribunal in coordination with

Peruvian human rights, environmental, and labor rights organizations.

On October 21, 2005 the Tribunal heard testimony from the families,

experts in indigenous cultures of the Andes, Luis Gomero of RAAA, and

a representative of the Peruvian Human Rights Ombudsman's office.

Tribunal members included Maria Elena Foronda, President of the

National Environmental Society of Peru; Nicolas Espejo, of the Legal

Research Center at the Diego Portales University in Chile; and Dr.

Flora Luna, President of the Peruvian Medical Association.

 

" Listening to the Tauccamara parents tell what happened was wrenching.

No child should suffer and no parent should have to endure what

happened on that day, or afterwards, " noted Monica Moore, Co-Director

of PAN North America, who attended the Tribunal as a member of a PAN

International delegation. " Their strength and courage in insisting the

Government and Bayer must finally act to prevent future poisonings is

almost unbelievable under the circumstances they face. "

 

Peru's first elected indigenous legislator, Congress member Paulina

Arpasi spoke forcefully about the lack of justice for poor and

marginalized campesino communities in Peru, and joined the families'

call for the full Congress to approve the results of an official

congressional investigation into the tragedy. This investigation found

both government agencies and Bayer responsible for the poisonings, but

has been shelved under pressure from the industry for more than four

years.

 

The Citizens' Tribunal found that Bayer failed to implement even the

most basic safety precautions to prevent the misuse of methyl

parathion in Peru. Bayer marketed the highly toxic product in a simple

plastic bag with label instructions only in Spanish. Many Peruvians,

including most of the inhabitants of Tauccamarca, speak only the

indigenous language Quechua and are illiterate. Bayer's label offered

no pictograms to indicate the toxicity of its contents to users -- the

only image on the package was of colorful, healthy vegetables. Many

countries require that chemical companies add a stenching agent to

dangerous substances to warn consumers of their toxicity, but Bayer

sold methyl parathion in Peru without a telltale warning smell.

 

The woman in Tauccamarca who mixed methyl parathion with powdered milk

substitute told the police that she did not know how toxic the

pesticide was, but Bayer cannot make the same claim. The Tribunal

noted that the company has long known that methyl parathion is widely

misused and a serious threat to health in developing countries around

the world. Bayer stopped selling methyl parathion in Germany in 1989

due to citizen pressure, but continued to market it to other

countries. When a Danish video produced in 1997 revealed extraordinary

numbers of methyl parathion poisonings throughout Central America,

Danish manufacturer Cheminova was forced to withdraw its product from

Nicaragua. The US EPA banned most uses of methyl parathion in 1999.

 

Despite these and other well-documented dangers, Bayer continued to

aggressively market methyl parathion in developing countries long

after its use was prohibited or severely restricted in industrialized

countries. The deaths of Tauccamarca's schoolchildren were a

foreseeable and preventable tragedy.

 

The Citizen's Tribunal also found that the Peruvian government bears

responsibility for the tragedy. The Peruvian Ministry of Agriculture

failed to enforce Peruvian laws that limit the sale and use of highly

toxic pesticides and require appropriate protective packaging and

labeling. In addition, the Tribunal found that the Peruvian Ministry

of Health did not provide adequate medical attention. The nearest

health post, an hour away from the village, was neither staffed nor

equipped with the antidote to pesticide poisoning when the desperate

parents arrived bearing their dying children.

 

Based on the evidence of the case of Tauccamarca, the citizens

Tribunal questioned that the Peruvian government had complied with its

obligations to protect the basic human right to life, health care, and

provide special protections for children. The Tribunal called on the

Peruvian government to ensure that the surviving children in

Tauccamarca receive immediate and adequate medical attention, that the

village's school is staffed with a special education teacher, and that

the government investigate and sanction all responsible parties.

Equally important, the Tribunal called on the government to ban the

sale and use of pesticides designated by the World Health Organization

as " extremely " and " highly " hazardous (WHO Category 1a and 1b pesticides).

 

The Tribunal also called on Bayer to assume responsibility for its

role in the tragedy, provide compensation to the victims' families,

and create a fund to cover the costs of independent medical monitoring

for the surviving children of Tauccamarca. The Tribunal also demanded

Bayer take steps to prevent future tragedies by immediately

withdrawing from the Peruvian market all their WHO Category 1a and 1b

pesticides, and ceasing export of these pesticides to any country

where they cannot be safely used under existing socioeconomic conditions.

 

* Pesticide Action Network International and allies observe December

3rd as an annual International Day of No Pesticide Use as a reminder

of the 1984 disaster, when a pesticide factory in Bhopal, India spewed

deadly gas into the surrounding community, causing the deaths of more

than 15,000 people and injuring many more. This PANUPs is the second

in a series of articles commemorating this event.

 

Sources: Citizens Tribunal Verdict. 6 December 2005. Lima Peru. Full

text in Spanish available on the PAN Peru website,

http://www.raaa.org/Tauccamarca/principal.htm ; Action and

Alternatives to the Use of Pesticides Network website (in Spanish):

http://www.raaa.org/Tauccamarca/cronologia.htm ; Rosenthal, Erika.

2003. The Tragedy of Tauccamarca: A Human Rights Perspective on the

Pesticide Poisoning Deaths of 24 Children in the Peruvian Andes .

Journal of International Occupational Health 9:53-538.

 

Contact: PANNA

 

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