[2004] Barren Justice  Francisco Gonzáles believes he lost his chance to be a father because of the pesticide DBCP. "I can't have children," says Gonzáles who began working in the banana plantations of Chinandega, Nicaragua, in 1975, when he was 20 years old. "It's very painful, you know, each one of us would like to have our own child, a child of our blood. But I was poisoned."
     In 1977, after learning that the chemical also caused workers at an Occidental Petroleum factory to become sterile, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency prohibited the use of DBCP in California. In 1979, the EPA banned DBCP in the continental United States.......
....however, chemical companies continued to export DBCP, possibly as late as the mid-1980s. .... following the US ban Dow Chemical, Shell Oil, Occidental Petroleum, and Amvac Chemical deliberately exported their existing DBCP inventory to Nicaragua, and Standard Fruit continued to use it on banana plantations. Nicaragua did not prohibit the use of DBCP until 1981.
   .....When the banana workers brought their cases against these corporations, they faced an even more formidable challenge: the American legal system. One of the most considerable impediments to compensation in U.S. courts is the legal doctrine of forum non conveniens or inconvenient forum. Under this doctrine, a case can be rejected by a court on the grounds that it would be more appropriate to hear it in another locale, such as the plaintiff's home country.
      Forum non conveniens was used against plaintiffs from the world's worst industrial accident in Bhopal, India, who sought to sue the U.S. corporation Union Carbide, now owned by Dow Chemical. The disaster killed 14,000 people and injured hundreds of thousands. In 1986, a federal court in New York rejected the case on the grounds that India would be a better forum for the lawsuit. Subsequently, little has come of the case in Indian courts.

[2003] Vietnam: Agent Orange Still Killing After Three Decades  An estimated 650,000 victims are suffering from chronic illnesses in Vietnam alone, and another 500,000 have already died, researchers say.

[2002] ECUADOR: Farmers Fight DynCorp's Chemwar on the Amazon  "Imagine that scene for a moment -- you are an Ecuadorian farmer, and suddenly, without notice or warning, a large helicopter approaches, and the frightening noise of the chopper blades invades the quiet. The helicopter comes closer, and sprays a toxic poison on you, your children, your livestock and your food crops. You see your children get sick, your crops die."
.....DeWitt's organization has filed suit in US federal court on behalf of 10,000 Ecuadoran peasant farmers and Amazonian Indians charging Lombardi's company with torture, infanticide and wrongful death for its role in the aerial spraying of highly toxic pesticides in the Amazonian jungle,

[2001] Toxic Drift: Monsanto and the Drug War in Colombia Digging further, Van Royen found something alarming: another additive called Cosmo-Flux 411 F was being added to increase Roundup's toxicity. The Roundup/Cosmo-Flux mixture has never been scientifically evaluated nor has the public, either in the U.S., or in Colombia, been informed of this practice..... "the [Roundup Ultra] mixture with the Cosmo Flux 411 F surfactant can increase the herbicide's biological action fourfold, producing relative exposure levels which are 104 times higher than the recommended doses for normal agricultural applications in the United States; doses which, according to the study mentioned, can intoxicate and even kill ruminants." The use of this enhanced Roundup would not be acceptable in the U.S. without prior testing and scientific evaluation.   Furthermore, the label Roundup label warns that: "It is a violation of Federal law to use this product in any manner inconsistent with its labeling. Do not apply this product in a way that will contact workers or other persons, either directly or through drift. Only protected handlers may be in the area during application."

[2001] Colombia: Chemical Spraying of Coca Poisoning Villages  Franci sits on the veranda and whimpers. The little girl is underweight. Her armpits are erupting in boils. Like most of her people, she has suffered from respiratory problems and stomach pains since the aircraft and the helicopter gunships came over at Christmas and again at New Year dropping toxic pesticides on their villages.....'About 230 of the 450 pupils at our school have gone down with diarrhea, and respiratory and constantly recurring skin infections,' she said.
......Elsa Niva, a Colombian agronomist who works with the Pesticide Action Network, ridicules the US government's claims that Roundup Ultra is safe and no more poisonous than aspirin or table salt.  She has written that in the first two months of this year local authorities have reported 4,289 humans suffering skin or gastric disorders while 178,377 creatures were killed by the spraying including cattle, horses, pigs, dogs, ducks, hens and fish.

[2000] Monsanto/US War on Drugs Poisoning Colombian Environment  The aerial fumigation program that has grown out of the U.S. government's so-called "war on drugs" is endangering the fragile ecosystems and indigenous cultures of Colombia's Amazon Basin, a coalition of groups warned today at a news conference on Capitol Hill.