Shell called negligent in Brazil toxic waste case
Date: 12-Nov-01
Country: BRAZIL
Author: Sharon Cohen
According to a report due to be released next week and which sources close to the case made available to Reuters last week, the ministry found that Shell-Quimica had not only contaminated residents of a rural town in Sao Paulo state but that there had been "negligence, ineptitude and recklessness by the company's industrial leaders."
Shell officials reached by Reuters last week dismissed the report as baseless.
Last month, the state's health watchdog said it supported a study by the town of Paulinia that found that 156 of 181 residents living near a factory owned by Shell-Quimica had "unacceptable" levels of at least one metal or pesticide in their bloodstream. Fifty-nine people suffered from thyroid or liver tumors.
The ministry, which functions like a U.S. state's attorney, based its findings on visits to Paulinia and documents from the mayor's office and the Sao Paulo state environmental agency.
It said residents near Shell-Quimica's plant had been exposed to "chronic pollution, produced by Shell, since the 1970s through the air and then water in the neighborhood."
Shell has repeatedly rejected the charges and accused Paulinia of using low benchmarks to measure contamination compared with those recommended by the World Health Organization. It acknowledged in 1994, however, that it had polluted the soil and ground water at the pesticide plant and promised to decontaminate the site.
It has since provided drinking water, social counseling and medical exams for residents. But it denies that the contamination affected residents and is buying the property around the plant to avoid alarming residents.
Maria Lucia Braz Pinheiro, vice president of Shell-Quimica for Latin America, told Reuters she received the report on Tuesday and described it as "another report with technical inconsistencies and lacking a scientific base."
Shell owned the factory between 1974 and 1995 but stopped producing Aldrin, Dieldrin and Endrin pesticides in 1990, when Brazil banned them. They are among the 12 persistent organic pollutants, dubbed the "dirty dozen," that remain in the environment for over 100 years without breaking down and accumulate in the food chain.