PANNA: Kamukhaan: A Village Poisoned

Dr. Quijano and his daughter traveled to the village of Kamukhaan, the Philippines. The following story is based on interviews with residents and health workers there.

The place was so barren and desolate, it almost looked abandoned, except for the shabby huts and the impoverished inhabitants. This is Kamukhaan, a community of 150 families in Davao del Sur, Mindanao, Philippines. For the past 19 years, the people who live here and the land they depend on for their livelihoods have been slowly dying. The poisonings, sickness and poverty started when the GADECO banana plantation moved in next to Kamukhaan in 1981. Since then, the village has been exposed to large doses of the pesticides the plantation uses to grow its cash crop. Through regular aerial and ground spraying, the people have been in direct contact with these chemicals for years, their health and environment withering under the deadly mist of the pesticides. And while the "perfect," unblemished bananas produced in the plantation are shipped off to major fruit canning companies and consumers in foreign countries, the people of Kamukhaan are left to pay the price.

Kamukhaan was not always the wasteland it is now. As village elders wistfully recall, it was once a place so rich in natural resources that people were never hungry. Trees and all types of vegetation were abundant, and the sea was filled with marine life. The villagers who either fished or grew crops for a living always had more than enough to feed their families and sustain a comfortable lifestyle.

The land where the banana plantation now stands originally belonged to the descendants of the Buloy family, part of the Manobo tribe, who rented the property to U.S. citizens during the U.S. occupation. Diego Buloy, 71, the only living member of the Buloy family, says, "They promised to raise cattle on the land, but instead they cheated us and we have never been able to recover it." The GADECO company, which is currently using the vast acreage for a banana plantation, promised a "banana dreamland" that would bring prosperity to the region. At present, however, virtually no trace of their past life remains. All that is left is barren land, a contaminated sea, and 700 sick, impoverished people breathing poisoned air.

No escape from the pesticides

Since the plantation's expansion in the early 1980s, the people of Kamukhaan have been exposed to aerial spraying of pesticides as often as two or three times a month. The crop dusters the company uses to ensure pest-free, export quality bananas sweep through the plantation and over the village. When there is spraying, the villagers cannot escape the fumes, not even in their homes. Their eyes sting and their skin itches. Many experience feelings of suffocation, weakness and nausea. "Children playing in the street come in, coughing and complaining that their eyes hurt," says Alona Tabarlong, 31. "The airplane passes over our streets, and even when it's far away, the pesticide fumes still reach inside our houses." Another villager reports that during aerial spraying, he sometimes gets sprayed with pesticides and itchy, painful skin lesions quickly appear.

Previously healthy children and adults are now extremely vulnerable to disease. Skin diseases, abnormalities and various types of illnesses are rampant among the villagers. They easily catch fevers and regularly have spells of weakness, dizziness, vomiting and coughing. Many experience stomachaches, backaches and headaches that are aggravated during periods of aerial spraying. Others suffer ailments such as asthma, thyroid cancer, goiter, diarrhea and anemia. Edgar Rodriguez, 31, states, "My skin has these white spots and I have difficulty breathing. I often have severe coughing fits, and sometimes I can't sleep because of it."

Some adults have also been diagnosed with serious, terminal diseases such as cancer. Others have died. A village officer, Leonardo Tigaw, testified that in the month of August 1999 alone, five people died due to diarrhea and fever. Michael Bakiran, 31, said that his mother constantly complained of the pesticide fumes, and he suspects that she died of pesticide poisoning. "Her stomach became enlarged, and she became weak. The hospital diagnosed it as a ‘complicated disease' and she died two weeks later."

Nanette Rodriguez, 37, says, "Just this July, nine people died. Several people became sick before and some have already died, and so we appealed to the manager of the plantation. But he said that they won't pay the hospital bills because our water caused the illnesses, not the plantation's pesticides--even when hospital doctors say that our water supply is contaminated with pesticides that have seeped into the soil. That's also the reason why so many people get sick, and are forced to spend so much money on doctors and medicine. Others don't even reach the hospital alive." Apparently, deaths caused by chronic diseases have plagued the people of Kamukhaan for years. "Just yesterday," a villager testified, "a woman lost two of her children."

Children suffer

Infants are often born sick and with abnormalities, ranging from cleft lip and palate to badly disfigured bodies. Many children are born with severe skin problems. It is not rare for babies to die at birth or shortly thereafter. When Rebecca Dolka, 36, gave birth to her child, it was lifeless, its body and eyes yellow in color. "I didn't think that the pesticides I inhaled would affect my pregnancy," she said.

Exposure to pesticides has also had serious effects on the local children's mental and physical development. Most of the children are behind in their studies and are often absent from class due to sickness. For example, Lilibeth Hitalia, an 8-year-old child, is regularly rushed to the hospital because of diarrhea. "She was born very small and didn't start to speak until she was four years old. She still has great difficulty understanding things," her mother relates.

Crops and animals poisoned

Plants and crops in the village have also been seriously affected. When the plantation began spraying pesticides, the coconut trees suddenly stopped bearing fruit and the villagers were forced to cut them down. "The chemicals the plantation uses might be good for their banana crops, but not for our coconut trees. It is destructive," says villager Nanette Rodriguez. Their soil, too, has become infertile, so growing crops for food and for income is now very difficult. Even grass grows scantily in the village. Raising pigs, chickens and other animals has also become extremely hard, in part because some die every time pesticides are sprayed. Animals that wander into the plantation or eat grass nearby sometimes die. Villagers believe that their streams are contaminated since many animals refuse to drink from them, and and those that do drink the water become sick.

Water contaminated

Aside from the aerial spraying, the plantation also ground-sprays the banana crops using chemicals such as carbofuran (classified by the World Health Organization as "highly hazardous," WHO 1b) and fenamiphos (classified by the World Health Organization as "extremely hazardous," WHO 1a). The village people believe that their underground water supply, 180 feet deep, is contaminated. During the rainy season, rains wash over the plantation land and pesticide-laced water flows into the village where it rises as high as waist-deep. Villagers who must wade through it and the children who play in it often become ill.

Even more serious for the village, the river and the sea, both major sources for food and income, have not been spared from pesticide poisoning. Their waters, once teeming with fish, are now heavily polluted with chemicals. Fishermen recall a time 30 years ago, "when we used to catch up to 200 kilos of fish every day. Now we are lucky if we can catch two kilos." Fish kills have become a regular occurrence, when there used to be none. Some villagers still depend on the contaminated fish for food and are often poisoned as a result.

Complaints have been brought repeatedly to the plantation owners, but they have refused to accept responsibility for the damage caused by their pesticides. In an attempt to appeal to provincial authorities, the fishermen took samples of water, soil and dead fish to the town hall, but again their pleas fell on deaf ears, and no action was taken.

With pesticides destroying the natural resources they were dependent on, the villagers who never used to go hungry now find themselves going to bed with empty stomachs.

Workers heavily exposed to pesticides

Unable to support their families any longer as farmers or fishermen, many men were forced to turn to the plantation for work. They are often employed as drainage workers and pesticide applicators, working in direct contact with the chemicals with little or no protective clothing. One laborer tells how he was required to walk through drainage ditches, where contaminated water reached his thighs, rendering his boots useless. He lost two toes after his foot became badly infected and he was forced to pay for the treatment with his own money. Another laborer doing similar work died of cancer of the foot.

Pesticide applicators inject pesticides into the banana plants or apply it directly with a backpack sprayer, sometimes daily. Two laborers who had sprayed paraquat were hospitalized, and one of them died. Other workers have recurring spells of dizziness, weakness and itching skin and are absent from work almost once a week. Edward Rama, who injects bitertanol (not registered for use in the United States) and deltamethrin into banana buds every week, says that he "tires easily and is always feverish, experiences stomach aches, and has skin that constantly itches." José Antermo, 30, used Formalin (formaldehyde) daily, and experienced weakness and dizziness. "Formalin is very painful to my nose, and my chest tightens when I smell it. My wife lost our child when she was four months pregnant. I think it was because of my job. She washes my work clothes doused with Formalin." Laborers who work on the plantation for long periods of time often become too weak and sickly, and must stop working.

Workers exploited

While they ransom their health working in the plantation, the people of Kamukhaan receive only minuscule wages in return. The average employee who works in extremely hazardous conditions from morning until sundown receives about 45 pesos (US$1.10) a day. "Sometimes, we receive 90 pesos, if we finish a lot," says one of them. This small amount of money is not enough to buy food that would sufficiently sustain their families. Often, these workers don't receive the medical treatment they badly need because they cannot afford to pay for it. The plantation refuses to increase employees' wages and will not pay for hospital bills.

One employee tells us he is not getting paid his salary but is paid in food instead. He claims that for each cubic meter that he digs he was promised nine pesos, and he digs about six cubic meters every day. "I should be given 54 pesos a day but instead I get five kilos of rice every week. That is supposed to be enough to feed my family of four." He has tried to complain about this unfair arrangement but according to him "the labor contractor is never around." Some people are so desperate to earn money that they sell ipil-ipil leaves (an ingredient for animal feed) for two pesos per kilo, earning only 100 pesos a week.

With their health deteriorating, their food supply seriously depleted, their land destroyed and with no other source of income, the people of Kamukhaan may not be too far from extinction--unless they find an effective antidote to their poisoned lives. The plantation feigns ignorance when confronted with complaints about unsafe pesticide operations, and the local authorities likewise are of no help to the villagers. A village elder says with resignation, "We've tried, but as much as we want to, we cannot do anything about it any more. We are up against very powerful people."

Profit at any cost

Would anyone go so far as to slowly and painstakingly destroy more than 700 lives in the name of profit? Apparently, yes. In a land riddled with disease and poverty, the survival of the people of Kamukhaan hangs by a thread. By sharing their stories of what they have endured throughout the years, they are crying out for help. Deeply mired in sickness, poverty and hopelessness, maybe it is all that they can do. Perhaps we can help by lifting them up from the place that profit-hungry corporations have put them, and once more giving them a glimpse of the life they once had and still deserve.

It is in remote villages like Kamukhaan where the picture of globalization and human greed is most clearly depicted. Unfortunately, few seem to take notice. The victims of suffering and injustice have knocked on our doors. They have presented their plight, which clearly reveals the grave impact pesticide use hasd had on people's lives, and how it caused the degeneration of Kamukhaan from a virtual paradise to a living hell. The damage created by tyrant companies can only be undone with the aid of people who value the intrinsic worth of human life over money and profit. Perhaps by working hand in hand with the people of Kamukhaan to rebuild their homes and lives, we may be one in our hope to transform this world into the paradise we want for ourselves and for our children. For as long as villages like Kamukhaan exist, the battle against injustice, human greed and oppression is never won.

Dr. Romeo Quijano is an Associate Professor at the Department of Pharmacology, College of Medicine, University of the Philippines Manila, the President of Pesticide Action Network Philippines and the southern co-chair of the International POPs Elimination Network (IPEN). He also serves as a consultant to the Department of Health and the Pesticide Authority and a resource person and/or board member of various non-governmental organizations. For the past 18 years, he has been engaged in work related to health and human rights, community-based health programs, pharmaceuticals, and pesticides and other environmental pollutants.

Ilang-Ilang Quijano, the third daughter of Dr. Quijano, is a student at the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of the Philippines Manila and has worked as a research assistant for the Pesticide Action Network Philippines.

Contact: PAN Philippines, Lot 2 Blk 30 Salome Tan St., BF Executive Village, Las Pinas City, Metro-Manila, Philippines 1740; phone (632) 805 0585; phone/fax (632) 521 8251; email romyq@manila-online.net, pidiong@yahoo.com.