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France-Martinique

“Production of chlordecone was stopped in the United States - where it was marketed as Kepone - as far back as 1975, after workers at a factory producing it in Virginia complained of uncontrollable shaking, blurred vision and sexual problems. In 1979, the World Health Organization classed the pesticide as potentially carcinogenic. 

But in 1981 the French authorities authorised chlordecone for use in banana plantations in the French West Indies - and even though it was finally banned in 1990, growers lobbied for - and got - permission to carry on using stocks until 1993.


It was only in 2018 - after more than 10 years of campaigning by French Caribbean politicians - that President Emmanuel Macron accepted the state's responsibility for what he called ‘an environmental scandal’.


Martinique is an integral part of France, but one of the island's MPs, Serge Letchimy, says it would never have taken the state so many years to react if there had been pollution on the same scale in Brittany, for example, or elsewhere in European France.“


The Caribbean islands poisoned carcinogenic pesticide

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