ABSTRACT
Nowadays, the sanitary, economic, and social crisis caused by chlordecone (CLD) in the French West Indies (FWI) may be considered as essentially contained thanks to the efforts undertaken by the authorities to avoid the population’s dietary exposure to it (see chapters 17 and 18). A nal solution to the problem would, however, involve eliminating the source of CLD responsible for the diffuse pollution of all the FWI environmental compartments and related food resources and so to destroy the stock of CLD still present in the soils. One of the cheapest and most environmental-friendly destruction methods corresponds to microbial degradation. Such a mode of destruction seems to be particularly appropriate in the case of FWI since it can often be implemented in situ, using techniques (e.g., watering; addition of nutrients, labile organic matter, microorganisms) that are fairly easy to incorporate into existing agricultural practices. The latter is important as the pollution is estimated to cover some 19,000 ha of arable lands (Le Déaut and Procaccia, 2009). Until now, however, there is no evidence of natural attenuation in the environments impacted by CLD and therefore of the possibility to stimulate the rate of the process. For instance, in 1989, Hugget stated
14.1 Introduction .................................................................................................. 191 14.2 Gibbs Free Energy of Potential Reactions of CLD Transformations and
Reduction Potential of CLD/CLD-Cl10−nHn Couples .................................... 193 14.3 Experimental Conrmation of CLD’s Susceptibility to Microbial
Transformations ............................................................................................ 197 14.4 Limits of the Thermodynamic Approach ..................................................... 199 14.5 Possible Reasons for the Apparent Absence of CLD’s Natural
Attenuation in FWI Environments ............................................................... 201 14.6 Concluding Remarks and Perspectives .........................................................203 Acknowledgments ..................................................................................................205 Dedication ..............................................................................................................205 References ..............................................................................................................206
