Trafigura: no link identified between toxic dumping incident and serious injuries

On 17 September 2009 our front page story "Toxic shame" concerned the legal settlement in the UK of claims by individuals who alleged that they had been injured when waste from a Trafigura chartered ship was illegally dumped by an independent contractor in Cote d'Ivoire in 2006.

The article stated that claimants had been maimed and wrongly suggested that, due to the settlement, claims of more serious injuries including miscarriages would not be tested in the High Court case. In fact such claims had already been withdrawn earlier last year. A joint statement issued by both parties in that case said that independent experts have been "unable to identify a link between exposure to the chemicals... and deaths, miscarriages, still births, birth defects ... or other serious and chronic injuries". The story featured the photograph of a woman with a severely scarred face, a condition which Trafigura says, and we accept, cannot therefore have been caused by the waste. We are happy to set the record straight.