Information i. Want to express. Your facebook and twitter up to date and in touch. With. Our journey begins in the province of miss eunice in northeastern argentina the sub tropical climate is ideal for growing tobacco for more than twenty years herbicides have been used here extensively chief among them. Thats had serious consequences for many of the local residents. The media recount only vettel has been fighting for years to stop the use of life estate and other Agro Chemicals hes agreed to help us with our report the tobacco thats grown here ends up in products sold in the us and europe. And not in my grandparents generation grew up healthy. But many of the people of my generation are sick because we work on the fields. We used to grow tea and coffee plants in tobacco harvested the crops by hand. We have news chemicals that today the work is easier on one man but its damaged our health. Like that of the world and i love. Ricardo works for an Energy Company he noticed that a lot of tobacco farmers werent paying their bills on time he did some research and determined that just about all of those farmers were caring for Sick Children ricardo introduced us to some of these people. That. Are a family lived for years right next to their tobacco field like all the farmers in the region they used life to say to improve the quality of their crops failed to back a harvest would have meant financial ruin. Some of the children here have Serious Health problem is a korean doctor they look you know he has its the skin those who can order some of his skin pores of closed so we cant sweat yet and that raises the body temperature if you like his whole body is on fire and anything which there is all you can do is scratchy skin its not us we are stuffed into the worst is when he rubs his other. The muscles we have a little look at. Lucas is five years old and was born with a genetic mutation. Look i think when i was six months pregnant i spayed pesticides around the house i was wearing shorts and sandals. And you know no one warned you and i you know it was at that age that i you know no one told us anything. And there were no warning labels on those products. You know i have to use these pesticides. But those pesticides are what started this but as you know. Thats when the trouble started you know in the spring. Are you become oh you know youre here. You should eat i would like. To be looking on the families is that. Were all living with the effects of using pesticides because youre like theres got to be a connection but no one talks about it because he. Was his seat is that everyone here is sick or you know like no one warned us its like its the poisonous chemicals that did it nothing else a lot of it is here theyre looking. For years all the farmers in the region have been using genetically modified seeds and herbicides that contained lifeless eight are not zero did not wear protective clothing when he sprayed those chemicals. That have been. They were the women the family recently moved away from their contaminated farmland but they also had to give up their crops which were their main source of income. From the war are you angry about what happened to lucas. And i wouldnt and im not angry. That im sanity because if we have more children they could end up in the same condition and i hope that doesnt happen. No one understands what were going through. Life is hard riding on the game and i mean were living from day to day well look at the remedy but were happy that lucas is in pretty good Health Except for the skin problems with the road home and he can eat just about everything that you know what. The rate of birth defects in this province is higher than normal that. The farmer started using genetically modified seeds back in one thousand nine hundred ninety six based on the positive results of a study conducted by the Agro Chemical giant monsanto. A few kilometers away we meet another family that grows tobacco they also have a sick child on the power three during. The. Coldest year again. Eleven. This read so well is common in this john is province but after twenty years of life to say much of it has become contaminated. Everyone around here uses herbicides. From out of. The local water is contaminated as well. No one warned the farmers about the potential dangers of these chemicals the herbicides were touted as an agricultural miracle. Can if that was but it was one to make the best use of your farmland. Leave it to us. In an intensive Advertising Campaign in argentina praise the herbicides to the skies these included round up the brand name under which is often solid and estimated three hundred million liters of life are saved are used in argentina every year. We thank everyone whos become part of the round up family and argentina bring thirty years of round up thirty years of safety. That you know this is the p. C. Way to go. In twenty ten attorneys in the u. S. Started contacting families in miss eunice province including the nonu. S. Family their seventeen year old son william was born with serious birth defects. Is quite frail his muscles awake. I give him a little milk now and then. Thats all he can handle. It will give him liquids and pieces of banana and other fried. Sorry welly. Its tough but we have to keep on living a lot of people have just given up but we just do the best we can i know that willie can understand us i can see that by the way he breathes again never again again. The parents have received no guidance on how to raise a child who has a physical disability and no Financial Support from the government. But the american attorneys offered them some hope. They came to visit five or six times two attorneys and two or three doctors. They were all from the united states. And they spoke english. They talked about money that would come from the u. S. Three Million Dollars just for a while yet. They told us others would receive compensation they said thered be even more money and i should start thinking about what i was going to do with that. Williams parents believed the attorneys promises five years ago they signed an agreement not to talk in public about their case and they kept to that nondisclosure agreement until now. They say they havent seen the attorneys since they signed and no money either. They kept telling us that we shouldnt talk to anyone about this. It would invalidate the agreement and wed have to pay all their fees. You know so just a few people went public. But weve had enough. Those people know exactly how many disabled children are being born. But they want us to keep growing tobacco. I mean i thank you for coming thanks for talking to us. Stop by any time that weve got to think about you stay strong. Tobacco farming is by far the largest source of income here in san jacinto a province once a year all the farmers come here to sell their harvest to the Philip Morris company this is the most important day of the year for them because theyll find out how much money theyll get for twelve months of work this year for the first time theres a Labor Union Representative here. The faith. That. This is the moment theyve all been waiting for. Believe to be happy with what they get or theyll be disappointed. But if everything goes all right. Well be able to purchase what they have spent the entire year working for them. Its a really important day for through. The tobacco bales are examined for texture aroma and color the farmers say that without the herbicides there tobacco would not be able to meet the buyers high standards. The jewel of. The price is based on the quality of the crop this bale for example isnt quite up to standard so ive got to take it out. And actually the whole harvest was poor this year ill buy it but at a lower price. The. Company representatives determine what price they will pay to each farmer it takes them about thirty seconds to decide there are no negotiations. So how to go. To tell you the truth thats a really low price for so much tobacco really low. Apparently the quality wasnt very. Good and. This farmer got the equivalent of about one thousand euros for his entire crop. Of nine hundred forty seven kilos eleven thousand five hundred seventy five pesos let me see how much that is pretty low. Thats nothing but the theft of that. Was the worst price ever. That. Way under the recent average. Backhoe back of. The farmers are angry but theres nothing they can do theres no other work around here. After the sale the farmers head off to buy supplies for next year well go with them and so will the union representative. If it with them weve got everything they need right here. The fertilizer herbicide seeds. Up and thats your. Promise come by themselves or we can deliver a turtle to see if. You come to. No one seems to be watching us so we take a look around the warehouse these are poisonous chemicals but the workers seem to be handling them without any special safety precautions. We find supplies of monsantos round up here and bears confidence and insecticide some critics say that confidence or maybe killing off the wii population. Then. Stop filming. Ok you think get out. But. Soon some of the bosses turn on one of them confronts us i dont know who they were going to get is about them there are hard core tobacco opponents around here they want to shut us down. Stop filming. Political to them if. Theres one of them over there. Look listen. You anti tobacco people just want to take pictures of our warehouse while we work. But you dont seem to understand that thats going to cause us all kinds of trouble. We decide to leave. And i think. You know. I think theyre nervous because they havent given their workers protective clothing. Even though the law says they have to do that. If it is he said it you know and theyre also nervous because they have chemicals there that are prohibited in tobacco production. You know. No one knows what long term impact this rather careless approach to handling these Agro Chemicals might have. This is the city of posadas the capital of miss eunice province doctors here say that the use of toxic chemicals in local agriculture could cause serious damage to human d. N. A. Over time. Hugo denial is the chief neurosurgeon at a Pediatric Clinic here he was the first to notice the increase in serious birth defects among children nearly all of these children come from areas where Agro Chemicals were used. After go to my retired Mario Barrera took his place. This child has been not us on the head. And on the stomach. These wounds are related in a very unusual way. Hes are not normal and. He was not they knew if we dont do anything these children will die sometime in the next five years. You know and he made a scene going if. These two girls suffer from medical problems caused by a genetic mutation in their x. Chromosome their mothers were exposed to herbicides while they were pregnant. Or did you store those chemicals at home not in the house the chemicals were all my brothers clothes their tobacco farmers. Do you know if they wore protective clothing. And i think so but im not sure. If we can you wash their workload. Yes. She dumped the water from doing her laundry into a nearby stream you know that stream provides Drinking Water and now its probably contaminated. With that but i mean i have you know. Even if the entire local environment is contaminated it doesnt mean that all children will become sick. But when the father is exposed to these chemicals they get into his body and alter his d. N. A. Didnt even he would pass that genetic mutation onto his children you cant fix this problem by just moving to another town. Their d. N. A. Has been permanently damaged and it. Hit me i dont automatically. We found these mutations and the fatty tissue of patients and their reproductive organs in womens ovaries and in mens testicles. And he had a penny. In the parents will pass these mutations along to their children. So their genetic makeup has been permanently altered in the but when you. Were the first to call attention to the situation soon other doctors in argentina made similar observations in two thousand and nine they published their results on high rate of miscarriages a six fold increase in Heart Defects among newborns and a five fold increase in new cases of cancer among Young Children monsanto a major producer of Agro Chemicals rejects these findings. Toxicological studies on animals have shown that life as a does not cause cancer impairment of the immune system birth defects or problems in the reproductive system. The use of life or say it is widespread in argentina but public opposition to these chemicals is growing for example a number of young people now refuse to work on their parents farms. Were now in buenos aires to meet two attorneys who are representing one hundred forty four families with six children. They learned only recently that american attorneys contacted some families and got them to sign nondisclosure agreements these attorneys plan to sue the big Agro Chemical companies for damages is that going to indicate that the farmers have a chance its like david taking on goliath all he done this if the the so. They do. We know the truth. And weve already won a few cases of you know we just you know what its a difficult process because of all the commercial interests. So we dont forget. This is a billion dollar industry. But well win in the end because we have facts evidence and the law on our side. Is that i mean still we should not underestimate their legal teams thats essential. But we believe that we can handle this. Those dozens of those and. Why have those nondisclosure agreements come to light only recently have been nobody to carry. Those agreements are one factor but weve also been advising families to avoid talking to people they dont know about their case you know youre going to go but we dont know who these people are either or what their motivation is. They could be representing potential plaintiffs and theyre just sniffing around for information on this you know we recommend that the families talk to us exclusively isnt it be a we also put them in contact with journalists so that they can describe what happened to that youre very involved in a lawsuit that we had buys them not to talk about it. Thats just our advice nothing more was by no look we got to you know. The families and the attorneys hope to win settlements that could total millions of dollars but the process could take years the lawsuits were filed against monsanto and Philip Morris the largest tobacco buyer in miss eunice province Neither Company was willing to provide a statement for this report. And. There have been public protests against the use of Agro Chemicals like this one in cordoba argentina second largest city. In twenty twelve a major landowner was sentenced to three years in jail sprained life too close to the city of go. With disastrous results. Some women formed a protest group that had. Since become famous across the country. Its on this corner and the soybeans are genetically modified. Like ninety percent of the crops in argentina. Sophia gothika heads the group mothers of the two signing go in two thousand and fourteen they oppose the construction of a huge monsanto seed factory near cordoba the factory was indeed built but the protests delayed its opening some held sophia responsible and threatened her. And i love it. When i was on the bus one day and a man threatened me with a gun. He said that if i didnt stop bothering monsanto he put a bullet in my head and. Since then ive had a bodyguard. If you take on the big corporations youre asking for trouble. Are protests are perfectly legal we demand the right to good health. All we wanted to do was stop construction of the factory theyre killing our children and they want us to keep quiet about it and it will begin about. Sophia now lives in a village thats located far from the big plantations she moved there mostly to protect her children. We assembled these documents over the last fifteen years. This is the first map we made. My thoughts how it all started all of us were still living in goal at the time and more and more friends and neighbors got cancer especially leukemia. Thats when i started to keep track of these cases. The triangles represent cases of leukemia those people live close to soybean fields. Look one case after another sixteen cases among five thousand residents its usually one or two per one hundred thousand. The farm owners sprayed chemicals everywhere if they sprayed here they also hit the apartment blocks nearby. Same thing with the apartment blocks on the other side. We were right in the middle of the spraying area. My daughter died of kidney problems. My son could hardly walk anymore. We have to take him to the doctor all the time and they tell us that its caused by some sort of virus but i dont believe it i blame the government they know that were suffering at the Childrens Hospital they almost always have more than ten leukemia patients those children all came from. In tests and a clinic in one sorry researchers found traces of chemicals in the blood of three out of four children Agro Chemicals chromium lead and arsenic which are found in goes air and water. In the wells that supply our Drinking Water the authorities found traces of the toxic pesticide endosulfan it was in our Drinking Water. We complained so the officials turned off the water from that source and promised to send us some water tanks from cordoba. But first we had to sign an agreement that said we could not sue the government i still have the contract in black and white we had no Legal Recourse at all the fans had us and the horse you. And grow Chemical Companies have earned billions in argentina more than thirteen Million People have been exposed to their chemicals and they are paying the price. The fast pace of life in the digital noise. Shift has the lowdown on the web showing new developments and providing useful information the wittiest finds and interviews with makers and users. Next on. The top stories followed across social media and share your comments and content welcome. News flash an a list are on the rise with morning wired to make your contract great again that is their slogan their focus put your nation first i am taking a trip to highlights different shades of nationalism and to find out more of the nation me to you. The serious story join the conversation on to w unto itself and on facebook. Im a mother like two billion other mothers around the world i have one wish the best for my child. But in a society in which breastfeeding is often frowned upon and adds well for me to abound with profits is more important than my babys well being how do i know how to make the right decision. Starting december ninth on d w. A. Shaft