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Groundwater Pollution

Toxic legacy of Shell in Ecuador, Panama, and Costa Rica?

Screen Shot 2015-06-28 at 23.35.36Decades later, when American factory workers producing DBCP were found to be sterile and doctors in Costa Rica began to diagnose sterility in hundreds of banana plantation workers, health officials would question why Dow and Shell continued to sell a product knowing that “testicular atrophy may result from prolonged, repeated exposure.”

By John Donovan

Shell Oil Company is one of the defendant’s, along with Dole Food Company, Dow Chemical Company and others, in a current lawsuit in the U. S. District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana (New Orleans).

The Plaintiffs – plantation workers from Ecuador, Panama, and Costa Rica – allege that their health, welfare, and lives have been damaged from exposure to an extremely hazardous chemical pesticide, dibromochloropropane (“DBCP”)  manufactured and sold under various trade names, including Nemagon. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Shell’s toxic legacy in Curacao

From pages 52, 53, 54 & 55 of “Royal Dutch Shell and its sustainability troubles” – Background report to the Erratum of Shell’s Annual Report 2010

The report was made on behalf of Milieudefensie (Friends of the Earth Netherlands)

Author: Albert ten Kate: May 2011.

A toxic legacy in Curacao

Curacao and its oil refinery

Curacao is an island in the southern Caribbean Sea, off the Venezuelan coast. It is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and has a land area of 444 square kilometres. As of January 2010, its population amounted to around 142,000 people. Prior to 10 October 2010, when the Netherlands Antilles were dissolved, Curacao was administered as the Island Territory of Curacao, one of five island territories of the former Netherlands Antilles.

From 1918 until 1985, Shell owned and operated the Isla oil refinery in Curacao. During this period, the refinery has been one of the most important lifelines of Curacao. For example, in the early fifties it employed more than 12,000 people out of the total island population of 110,000 people. The refinery generated the foreign exchange necessary to finance the imports the island could not produce itself.  In the beginning of the eighties, Shell-companies provided for 33% of the island’s Gross National Product. Apart from the refinery, Shell had a local sales company, an oil storage/transshipment company, and a shipping company on the island. Shell was very important to Curacao, and the government of Curacao treated Shell kindly. In 1980, a former director of Shell declared towards a reporter of the Dutch newspaper NRC: “The Antillean government? We were that government.” read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Water board torture for Shell Oil Co

The Associated Press March 15, 2011, 10:10PM ET

Water board orders Shell to clean up neighborhood

LOS ANGELES

A California water board has ordered Shell Oil Co. to clean up a Carson neighborhood built on top of an oil storage facility that could hold up to 140 million gallons of crude oil.

The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board required the company to come up with plans to clean up the site that the board will review. The soil contains dangerous levels of cancer-causing benzene, naphthalene and benzopyrene.

“The order requires Shell to clean the site to the most stringent standards for residential use in order to protect public health,” Samuel Unger, the board’s executive officer, said of the move Friday. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Cleanup ordered at Carson neighborhood Shell Oil polluted

1:08 p.m. | Molly Peterson | KPCC

State water regulators have ordered Shell Oil to clean up and monitor pollution in soil under the Carousel neighborhood of Carson.

Testing found benzene and hydrocarbons – chemicals known to cause cancer – four years ago.

The neighborhood sits where Shell maintained crude oil in reservoirs for decades.

The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board says Shell must make a plan to clean soil under some of the nearly 300 homes to a depth of 10 feet. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Brazil Court Fines Shell, Basf for Making Workers Sick

The plant was built in 1977 by Shell… Dozens of former employees of the plant have been diagnosed with prostate, thyroid and other types of cancer, circulatory, liver and intestinal illnesses, as well as infertility and sexual impotence, the statement added.

Caracas, Saturday August 21,2010

SAO PAULO – A Brazilian court has ordered the local units of Basf SE and Royal Dutch Shell Plc to pay 1.1 billion reais ($628 million) to cover the cost of medical treatment and compensation for former workers made ill by toxic substances.

The sentence, which can be appealed, was handed down by Judge Maria Ines Correa de Cerqueira Cesar of the labor court in Paulinia, Sao Paulo state, where a pesticide plant operated between 1977-2002.

The judge ordered the companies to pay the cost of medical treatment for all of plant’s former workers, as well as for the children of employees or contractors who were born during or after the time their parents worked at the factory. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Roll call of Shell toxic brands deadly to insects, crop pests AND humans

“Note the admission that Shell employees at a drins’ production plant were used as guinea pigs in a related study of carcinogenic properties carried out by the Royal Dutch Group.”

By John Donovan

Shell pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and insecticides

The roll call of Shell toxic brands deadly to insects, crop pests and humans…

Aldrin; Aldrin Soil Pest Killer; Ant Doom; Bidrin; Coppicide; DDT; DDT Dust; Derris Dust; Dieldrin; Dieldrin Garden Pest Killer; Endrin; Heptachlor; Koto; Netelex; Phosdrin; Pillakiller; Proponex; Shell Liquid Derris; Shell Tomato-Set; Shell Weedkill for Lawns; Shelltox; Slug Doom; Slug Kill; Sulficide; Telodrin; Universal DNC Fruit Tree Wash; Vapona

The following extracts are from “A HISTORY OF ROYAL DUTCH SHELL” Volume 2: a four volume history authored by a team of four historians associated with Utrecht University who were commissioned (paid) by Shell to write a full-length history of the company from 1890 until 2007. For this purpose, the team were given unrestricted access to Royal Dutch Shell’s archives. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Toxic soil lurks beneath Carson neighborhood

“Shell was slow to cooperate with the investigation, Egoscue said. “Initially they were dragging their feet,” she added. The agency sent the company a notice of violation in April 2009.”

“Most residents have joined a lawsuit against Shell and others…”

“It’s the most despicable situation I’ve seen in 40 years of doing this…”

Rosemary Noval walks up her driveway on Panama Avenue in Carson. She and her husband, Rudy, are living in one of the 285 homes found to be sitting atop dangerous levels of toxic substances. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

latimes.com

The discovery of methane gas and benzene has transformed a 50-acre neighborhood into an environmental case study — a reminder of Southern California’s history as a center of the oil industry.

By Jeff Gottlieb, Los Angeles Times April 27, 2010When Ron and Belinda Oglesby moved into Carson’s Carousel neighborhood in 2003, they saw a solid, middle-class area where homeowners set down roots and lived for decades, where Santa Claus paraded through the streets on a firetruck and children returned to buy their own homes.

This, they told themselves, was the perfect place to raise their three kids.

Six years later, they noticed workmen drilling holes and leaving cryptic white marks on the streets.

By last summer, they had discovered what the sudden activity meant: Preliminary tests under the direction of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board had found dangerous levels of potentially explosive methane gas and benzene under the 285 homes of the Carousel tract. In some spots, tests found benzene at concentrations seldom seen, levels that could significantly increase cancer risks for residents. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Groundwater decontamination from Valero refinery involving Motiva Enterprises to cost tens of millions

Costs for containing and cleaning up soil and groundwater alone are likely to run into the "tens of millions," Small said. Motiva Enterprises, a joint venture of Shell and Saudi Arabia's national oil company, is responsible for most of the groundwater cleanup.

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Shell fined for polluting groundwater: fined £18,000, ordered to pay £53,198 costs and for estimated £5 million clean up

Our officers traced the contamination to its source and the culprits are now spending millions cleaning up their act.’

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.
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