It all started as a beginning of exhaustion at the end of 2019. Patrick Dantin found it difficult to work on the plantations or do household chores.
Josette Dantin thought that something very serious was wrong with her husband, but doctors on the Caribbean island of Martinique stated otherwise.
During a holiday in Normandy, she realized with dismay that her husband could no longer walk and she finally insisted on another medical opinion in metropolitan France.
Thus, Patrick Dantin, 59 years old and a native of Martinique, one of the French overseas territories, discovered at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris that he suffered from a rare blood cancer: Waldenström's macroglobulinemia.
According to the doctors at the center, the cause had to be found in the long series of pesticides that he had used as a banana worker.
Dantin had to stop working on the banana plantations with immediate effect.
Years of chemotherapy awaited him to slow the course of an incurable disease.
“I saw him become a man I don't know,” says the woman, sitting next to her husband in the small room they live in in the Lamentin area, in the north of the island.
They both look tired.
Today, Dantin suffers from anemia, fatigue, and disabling pain in his hands and feet, as a result of his illness.
His life has changed a lot, his living space is reduced to the perimeter between the living room and the terrace of his home, where the views are the same as always.
On the horizon, exuberant banana trees gradually fade into the blue of the Atlantic.
A banana plantation in Martinique.
Farmers used chlordecone to protect plantations against the invasion of the banana weevil.Eddie Stok
On the island, around 90% of the population has a detectable level of toxic molecules in their blood.
According to a group of scientists from the research center of the Faculty of Medicine of the National Institute of Health and Medical Research of Guadeloupe (INSERM), in the French Antilles, this is the reason why the region holds, by a significant margin, the record for the highest rate of prostate cancer in the world, along with relevant levels of Parkinson's, premature birth and childhood brain damage.
Research is still ongoing regarding endometriosis and breast cancer.
According to the studies of Dr. Luc Multigner, these diseases are related to the use of pesticides, especially those containing chlordecone, as is the case of Patrick Dantin, whose illness is recognized by the State as a consequence of the use of this substance.
A French scandal
On February 29, the French Parliament will debate France's responsibility in the scandal caused by the use of chlordecone thanks to a bill signed by 35 deputies from the socialist group.
The text is based on the recognition of the State's culpability in the health and environmental disaster, and on the establishment of precise standards on the decontamination of land and water.
“This bill is an essential first step that must be completed,” the document states.
President Emmanuel Macron had already admitted in 2018, during a visit to Martinique, the responsibility of the French Republic in this scandal.
For many, it was a partial admission that came too late and without naming anyone guilty.
“The State has always been afraid to reveal a problem when it does not have a solution and it causes economic difficulties,” says Eric Godard, a former official at the Departmental Directorate of Health and Social Affairs in the French overseas territories.
In response to criticism, the State developed the chlordecona plan, an aid package to alleviate the effects of the pesticide through investments in the affected territory, to which it will allocate 130 million euros between 2021 and 2027. According to activists from the workers' group poisoned by chlordecone, this sum is ridiculous.
France has budgeted 1.4 billion euros to clean a single river, the Seine, on the occasion of the Olympic Games, they exemplify.
However, the plan includes access to the national compensation fund for pesticide victims, through which those affected can obtain a compensatory pension.
After hearing the news about this mechanism on television in 2022, the Dantin family immediately contacted a lawyer to help them with the procedures.
With 30 years of experience in pesticides and medical certificates in hand, Patrick Dantin met all the requirements, including that victims be able to prove their work experiences in which they came into contact with pesticides and that they suffer from an illness professional.
Once the compensation was obtained, Dantin was stripped of the disability pension that he received until then.
“In the end, he receives practically the same sum of money, it is another deception,” comments his lawyer Virginie Mousseau.
But there is hope for the family: the new bill also provides for the creation of a specific fund for victims of chlordecone, given the “laughable figures”, as the text states, of compensation from the existing fund.
Environmental disaster in the making
Patented in the 1970s, chlordecone is an organic compound used as a base for various insecticides.
Originally an American invention, it was quickly banned in the United States after dozens of workers at a Virginia factory developed severe tremors and an alarming clinical condition in 1975.
Shortly after, many European states made the sale of chlordecone illegal, but not France.
Despite warnings from the International Center for Cancer Research about the carcinogenic potential of chlordecone and the reluctance expressed by some experts as early as 1979, the Elysée provisionally approved its sale.
Thus, in 1981, just six years after the American incident, chlordecone pesticides entered the market in French overseas territories.
The farmers, who were fighting against the invasion of the banana weevil, welcomed them with enthusiasm.
Local authorities have imposed strict restrictions on local agriculture and fishing.
More than 70% of the food consumed by the Antilles comes from mainland France, but many cannot afford imported products
In the letters of the Minister of Agriculture kept in the national archive in Paris, you can read how the producers feared that the market would go into crisis because of this parasite, capable of decimating the production of a banana tree.
In a short time, chlordecone became a bestseller, thanks to an avalanche of advertising demonstrating its miraculous properties against pests.
In 1991 France banned the use of chlordecone only in its metropolitan territory.
Before the French Government extended the measure also to the islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, in 1993, more than a sixth of the world's production of chlordecone was used in banana plantations in the Antilles.
Three decades later, both islands and their 800,000 inhabitants are paying the consequences of an environmental and health disaster that has not yet ended.
The banana weevil, a pest of plantations in the Antilles.Eddie Stok
According to local institutions in Martinique and Guadeloupe, between 40% and 50% of the land on the two islands remains contaminated.
In particular, chlordecone levels are higher in places where bananas have been grown, says the prefecture of Martinique.
Through groundwater, this compound has also reached waterways and the ocean, where it has been deposited on the seabed.
According to reports from the French Biodiversity Office and the Water Office, chlordecone remains one of the most polluting pesticides in the rivers of Martinique and Guadeloupe.
The same happens with pollution on the coast of Guadeloupe: all the beaches on the island are in poor condition, according to its Water Observatory, which takes into account the European directive on water quality.
“Chlordecone has been chemically composed so that it does not disintegrate, without taking the environment into account,” explains Sarra Gaspard, one of the main researchers in the field of decontamination of soil where chlordecone is present.
It was she who discovered the only condition that makes the molecule biodegradable: the lack of oxygen.
It was previously estimated that chlordecone would contaminate the earth for 700 years.
Estimates are now more optimistic thanks to Gaspard's discoveries.
It is difficult, however, to estimate how long this situation will last in Martinique and Guadeloupe, since the scientist is still working to make decontamination techniques effective in different types of terrain.
“As for the aspect of microbiological degradation, I think we will have to wait about 10 years,” says the researcher.
Long-lasting toxicity
To stop the poisoning of the population, local authorities have imposed strict restrictions on local agriculture and fishing.
Fruits, vegetables, fish and livestock from close to contaminated land and water may be “chlordecontaminated”, that is, contain chlordecone above the levels authorized by the European Union.
Therefore, more than 70% of the food consumed by the Antilles comes from mainland France.
However, these imported products have a prohibitive cost that a considerable part of the population cannot afford.
According to the French National Statistics Institute (INSEE), food costs in Martinique and Guadeloupe almost twice as much as in France.
For about a third of citizens who live below the poverty line, there is no choice but to drink spring water and eat products from their own garden or local market, which escape the controls of the competent authorities.
Thus, many residents could continue to become poisoned with the food and water they consume.
Chronic exposure is very dangerous, warns Dr. Luc Multigner, since the ingested amounts accumulate in the body, which takes between 16 and 24 months to excrete any amount of chlordecone.
Chlordecone has been chemically compounded so that it does not break down, without regard for the environment
Sarra Gaspard, soil decontamination researcher
Both Josette Dantin and her four children have blood levels of chlordecone above the safe limit established by the French Government, she explains.
“We don't give up, but it's very difficult,” says the woman.
The fact that the couple is determined not to forget makes other workers in the sector uncomfortable.
“If you attack the boss, it will cost you dearly,” they told me,” Patrick Dantin recalls.
A prophetic sentence: on February 9, she had to go to court against her former boss, who until now has paid her part of her sick leave.
“He wants me to go back to work,” explains the Martinican.
Like him, many former workers suffer pressure from their communities not to take action against the businessmen, especially those who still live on the plantations.
Despite everything, Dantin continues to gather evidence to add to the folder he keeps under the television with all the documents in his case.
Temik, curlone, kepone... Patrick Dantin has written all the names of the chlordecone-based pesticides he has spread over the years in large pen letters, on a sheet of paper now wrinkled by time.
Through it all, he thinks about the day when his family will get justice.
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