Pesticides in the Caribbean: a report evokes a "health disaster"

Pesticides in the Caribbean: a report evokes a "health disaster"

According to the oncologist Dominique BELPOMME, the massive use of pesticides on farms in Martinique and Guadeloupe is responsible for a "health disaster". Following this investigation, he will request an investigation. According to Dominique BELPOMME, the use of chlordecone, an insecticide used massively in banana plantations until 1993, would cause abnormally high health problems in the French West Indies. In particular, the professor suspects that this product is responsible for prostate cancer and fertility disorders. But for the time being, no epidemiological investigation has been able to establish a relationship between chlordecone and the diseases affecting the West Indies. Luc MULTIGNER, a researcher at INSERM, believes that the exposure levels of the Caribbean population are not at risk: the concentrations of chlordecone in the blood are low. Commentary on illustration images alternating with interviews with Dominique BELPOMME and Luc MULTIGNER.

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File : Chlordecone scandal

Publication date : 17 September 2007