In 2006 the pesticides industry under the name of Crop Care filed a criminal case for defamation, claiming that Toxic Links' report, The Killing Fields of Warangal, had caused them harm. Although no companies were named, it documented over 500 deaths among pestide-exposed farmers in the cotton fields of Warangal, India where endosulfan is common. Toxics Links lost their legal battle to have the case quashed. Instead, the case went to a district court but Toxics Links was not notified of the hearing earlier this month and would have faced possible arrest for failing to appear, had they not acted quickly to have the arrest warrants withdrawn.
Acording to a February 14 news story in The Hindu, India's National Newspaper, a spokesman for the Endosulfan Manufacturers and Formulators association said the activities of Toxics Links had a negative impact on the manufacture of agrochemicals.
The Killing Fields of Warangal also made news in the British Medical Journal in August 2002. That article noted that an analysis by the Indian non-profit Center for Science and Environment found concentrations of endosulfan in foods at up to 200 parts per million (ppm), and at over 100 ppm in people's blood in the Kerala district of India. For reference, the Material Safety Data Sheet provided by the manufacturer identifies a workplace inhalation exposure limit of no more than 15 ppm in air for 15 minutes, or no more than 10 ppm in air over an 8-hour workday.
India's pesticide industry is the fourth largest in the world, and the largest producer of endosulfan.
Please comment below and let our brothers and sisters in India and worldwide know that we are working together to block corporate efforts to poison our land and our bodies with their toxic products. Ravi Agarwal, founder and managing trustee of New Delhi based Toxic Links, and his colleagues, Madhumita Dutta and Rajesh Rangarajan have a long battle ahead of them, but they will not stand alone!
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To mention one example, Aboriginal communities in the circumpolar North are heavily reliant on hunting and fishing for their food and cultural practices. This lifestyle has been threatened by a host of intrusions to their world, ranging from pollution due to local oil and gas operations, to volatile persistent organic pollutants (for example, DDT, dioxins, toxaphene, and others) used farther south such as in the US, Europe, China. These volatile pollutants travel northwards through the atmosphere to settle permanently in the fatty tissues and breast milk of people and mammals of the circumpolar region.
The result has been that critical food sources including seals, walrus’, polar bears, and other mammals, are so heavily contaminated with toxic pollutants that their very bodies qualify as biohazard waste under US laws. The same applies for/happens with human breast milk from mothers in the arctic regions. In this case, industrial pollution has poisoned the environment to such a large degree that cultural eating and hunting practices have had to be either abandoned or limited.
Some communities are vulnerable to environmental pollution because they are isolated and/or economically distressed, and often dependent on the local polluting industry for jobs and infrastructure. In the town of Libby, Montana, failure of the asbestos mining company (WR Grace) to control contamination has resulted in an asbestosis death rate among the town residents that is 40-60 times above the state and national averages respectively, according to a government report. In Libby, the tailings from the mine were falsely promoted as so ‘safe’ that they were used to line roads, school grounds, and driveways. In this case, an entire community, including its children, has been negatively impacted by the deadly negligence of the town company.
The Lloyds of London Insurance company has compared nanotechnologies now in development to the asbestos hazards of the last century, stating that “some [carbon] nanotubes, are similar in form and size to asbestos fibers….There are indications that certain nanomaterials are potential health hazards….The danger is most probably of a chronic nature and it could be some time before it manifests itself.”
The asbestos example is an important lesson. NRDC is advocating for protective new laws before new and potentially harmful technologies and materials are introduced into widespread industrial and commercial use.
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