Banana field workers seek compensation

MANAGUA, Nicaragua – About 1,000 former banana plantation employees demonstrated outside Nicaragua’s National Assembly building in the capital Wednesday to demand compensation payments for exposure to a banned pesticide.

The workers arrived in the capital, Managua, after a 70-mile march from western Chinandega province.

In 2002, a Nicaraguan judge ordered Dow Chemical, Shell Oil Co. and Standard Fruit Co. to pay $490 million to 583 banana workers allegedly affected by the use of the banned pesticide, known locally by the brand name Nemagon. But the case has since been transferred to U.S. courts.

The alleged victims sued the companies for using the pesticide in the banana fields of western Nicaragua.

Nemagon contains the pesticide dibromochloropropane, and repeated exposure has been shown to cause cancer and sterility in laboratory animals and an increased risk of cancer in humans. The U.S. government banned the pesticide in 1977.