SoCal Chemical Company to Pay Settlement to Nicaraguan Workers Exposed to Pesticide

By Mary Mitchell

Published on April 16, 2007

Tens of thousands of former banana plantation workers have filed lawsuits over the use of DBCP against defendants such as Dow Chemical Co. and Dole Fruit Co., which were also named in the Amvac case. DBCP has been proven to cause sterility and kidney and brain damage in laboratory animals. Its use was discontinued in the United States after employees at a Lathrop, California, plant were found to have near-zero or zero sperm counts after working with DBCP.

The Amvac settlement will provide payments of $2,000 to $60,000 to each worker, depending on their injuries and when they worked with the pesticide.

In 1997, Occidental Chemical Corp., Dow, and Shell Group settled a DBCP class-action lawsuit with 26,000 plaintiffs in Latin America and elsewhere for $41 million.

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