By
Abu Murad | August 29th 2007 04:56 PM |
Print |
E-mail |
Track Comments
.
More 4engr articles
All
Created originally by the American army, to disinfect water, the chlordecone proved to fight effectively against the enemy of the trees, the black characin, in the plantations of tobacco and cotton of the south of the United States. But the very toxic effect and polluting molecule, containing chlorine, was clearly defined, since 1978, and the United States then prohibited its production and its use on the American territory.
Very powerful toxic insecticide, the chlordecone, classified like cancerogenic substance at the man, poses environmental problems. In spite of a prohibition of use in France since 1990, it would have been used, until 2002, in Guadeloupe and in Martinique, to fight against the charançon in the banana plantations. Last on August 2, the president of the regional Council of the Guadeloupe pled for the creation of a parliamentary board of inquiry on the use of this pesticide in the Antilles.
The chlordecone pollutes the grounds whose the plants are nourished, the ground water and the sources of drinking water. The vegetables roots the such manioc, the yam, or the sweet potato for example, as well as vegetables crawling like melons or the cucumbers, to which the edible parts are close to the ground, can also be contaminated. The poultries, the carping ones and the bovines consuming of the contaminated plants become also contaminant in their turn for the man. Idem with regard to fish and shellfish.
In 1979, the international research center on cancer then classifies the chlordecone like possible cancerogenic substance at the man. However, “the dangers to the population never were truly taken into account”, according to the association of safeguard of the inheritance inhabitant of Martinique which deplores a world record of the island as regards cancer of the prostate and an important contamination of the pregnant women
