Exposing the French Caribbean's toxic banana farming scandal

In 2018, Jessica Oublié left Paris and moved to her family’s home in Guadeloupe. Days later, she learned the island was contaminated by chlordecone — a pesticide used on banana plantations that will linger in the soil for an estimated 700 years. Today, roughly 90% of adults on the islands carry traces of the pesticide in their blood. The islands have among the highest prostate cancer rates in the world. And no one has been held accountable. Jessica spent the next few years conducting over 130 interviews, tracing how the chemical got there — from the factory floors of Virginia, where it was first manufactured and banned, to the banana fields of the Caribbean, where France kept authorizing its use for decades. The result is Toxic Tropics: A Horror Story of Environmental Injustice, a work of comics journalism that blends documentary investigation with illustration and photography. The English translation, by Irène Vázquez, is out now from Street Noise Books. In this episode, Jessica walks us through what it's like to live on poisoned land, why she chose the graphic novel form to tell this story, and what would happen to the price of a banana if it reflected the true ecological damage behind it. 🎧 New episodes every other week. 🌐 Full episode page, transcript, and resources: talkingtrashpod.com 📱 Follow us: Instagram: @_talkingtrashpod TikTok: @talkingtrashpod YouTube: @talkingtrashpod CREDITS: Host & Show Creator: Matt King Art Director: Frances Miller