ABSTRACT
The people living down wind and down river from the massive Bayer industrial complex in the Belford Roxo district, some 20 miles from downtown Rio de Janeiro, know a lot about chemicals. Approximately 1800 people work in the complex, many living among the tens of thousands who exist “mainly in poor and even shanty town neighbourhoods”, according to David Hathaway, author of an upcoming book on the pesticide industry in Brazil. The wives and mothers of workers in the plants get used to the products their husbands and sons work with. “There is a lot of pollution and a bad smell, a chemical smell that comes at certain times of the day,” explains Maria das Gracas, who lives near the Sarapui River flowing beside the plant. The area, which was once quite pleasant, now seems barely habitable to das Gracas.
