Good news! Envelopes stuffed, Dole workers to be compensated

Good news: PestEd volunteers stuffed 1200 envelopes in about two hours last night. Good work, team! I'll include some pictures, below - when your fundraising appeal letter comes in the mail in a couple weeks, you'll know how it got stuffed.

Volunteers Maggie and Robyn stuffing envelopes on the left - check out that blur of envelope sealing action! New staffer Ana and volunteer Lee Ann stuff a monster stack of enveopes on the right. Great job, team!

And, the real good news: Nicaraguan farmworkers have been awarded $3.2 million dollars in a lawsuit against American company Dole Food, Inc. for exposing them to pesticides they say made them sterile. From a Nov 6 story in The LA Times:

A Los Angeles jury on Monday awarded $3.2 million to six Nicaraguan farmworkers who had sued Dole Food Co. Inc., arguing they had been rendered sterile some three decades ago by the international corporate giant's application of a banned pesticide on the plantations where they worked.

Jurors return today to consider whether Dole, and codefendant Dow Chemical Co., should be punished with more monetary damages. They will decide whether Dole acted maliciously in failing to warn its workers of the danger, and whether Dow engaged in gross negligence in manufacturing the chemical. (...)

From Beyond Pesticides:

(...) The lawsuit accused Dole and Standard Fruit Co., now a part of Dole, of negligence and fraudulent concealment while using the pesticide 1,2-Dibromo-3-Chloropropane (DBCP) to kill rootworms on banana plants. Until 1977, DBCP was used in the United States as a soil fumigant and nematocide on over 40 different crops. (...)

More information on DBCP from pesticideinfo.org.

You may also be aware that Dow Chemical is implicated in the Bhopal disaster, but according to a recent story from Agence France-Presse, Dow may finally settle with the Indian government on a clean up plan.