Veneno desde el cielo: cuando las guerras atacan la industria química

Methyl isocyanate gas.

Fifteen thousand people dead in the first days, some estimates put the eventual toll at twenty thousand or more.

And the contamination of the soil and water around that site is still causing birth defects and cancers in Bhopal today.

That was an industrial accident.

Now imagine that as a deliberate military strike.

Bueno, Bhopal es el caso extremo, claro.

Bhopal is the extreme case, of course.

Pero lo que me interesa señalar es que incluso cuando la escala es mucho menor, los efectos sobre la salud pública pueden durar generaciones.

But what I want to highlight is that even on a much smaller scale, the public health effects can last for generations.

Los organofosforados que produce ADAMA, por ejemplo, son disruptores endocrinos conocidos.

The organophosphates that ADAMA produces, for example, are known endocrine disruptors.

Afectan al sistema nervioso, al desarrollo hormonal.

They affect the nervous system and hormonal development.

La exposición aguda es una cosa;

Acute exposure is one thing;

la exposición crónica a niveles bajos es otra completamente distinta.

chronic low-level exposure is something else entirely.

So let's talk about what actually happens in these first hours after a strike like this.

Because there was a warning issued for the immediate vicinity.

What does that actually mean on the ground?

What's the protocol?

Mira, en teoría, el protocolo es bastante claro.

In theory, the protocol is fairly clear.

Primero, identificas el agente químico.

First, you identify the chemical agent.

Segundo, calculas la pluma de dispersión según la dirección del viento y la temperatura.

Second, you calculate the dispersion plume based on wind direction and temperature.

Tercero, evacúas o confinas a la población en un radio determinado.

Third, you evacuate or shelter the population within a certain radius.

En la práctica, cuando estás en medio de una guerra activa, cuando los sistemas de emergencia están sobrecargados, cuando la gente tiene miedo de salir a la calle por los misiles, ese protocolo se convierte en algo casi imposible de ejecutar correctamente.

In practice, when you're in the middle of an active war, when emergency systems are overwhelmed, when people are afraid to go outside because of missiles, that protocol becomes almost impossible to execute properly.

The extraordinary thing is that this tension, between the military reality and the public health imperative, is something that international humanitarian law has been grappling with for fifty years and still hasn't resolved cleanly.

There are protections in place.

Article 56 of Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions, 1977.

It specifically prohibits attacks on installations containing dangerous forces: dams, nuclear plants, and, specifically, chemical storage facilities.

Es que ahí está el problema, Fletcher.

That's exactly the problem.

El artículo 56 tiene excepciones.

Article 56 has exceptions.

Si la instalación contribuye directa y sustancialmente al esfuerzo militar del adversario, puede ser considerada un objetivo legítimo.

If the installation contributes directly and substantially to the adversary's military effort, it can be considered a legitimate target.

Y entonces empieza el debate sobre qué significa 'directamente' y qué significa 'sustancialmente'.

And then the debate begins over what 'directly' means and what 'substantially' means.

Los abogados militares pasan años discutiendo estos matices mientras la gente en el terreno respira los gases.

Military lawyers spend years arguing these nuances while people on the ground are breathing the gases.

Look, I've covered enough conflicts to know that the gap between what the law says and what happens on the ground is, more often than not, enormous.

I was in Beirut in 2006 when Israel hit the Jiyeh power station.

Fuel oil spilled into the Mediterranean.

It became the worst environmental disaster in the history of the eastern Mediterranean.

The health effects on fishing communities along the Lebanese coast lasted for years.

Y lo que describes en el Líbano, la contaminación marina, los efectos sobre las cadenas alimentarias, es un vector de salud pública que muy poca gente tiene en cuenta durante un conflicto.

And what you're describing in Lebanon, marine contamination, effects on food chains, is a public health vector almost nobody thinks about during a conflict.

Nadie habla de los peces.

Nobody talks about the fish.

Nadie habla de los niveles de metales pesados en los mariscos que come la población costera cinco años después de un bombardeo industrial.

Nobody talks about heavy metal levels in the shellfish eaten by coastal populations five years after an industrial bombing.

Eso no sale en los titulares.

That doesn't make headlines.

Right.

So let's bring this back to ADAMA specifically and what we know about what this company actually produces.

Because agrochemicals is a broad category.

We're not talking about nerve agents.

But some of these compounds are genuinely dangerous at scale.

Bueno, ADAMA es una de las mayores productoras mundiales de ingredientes activos para plaguicidas.

ADAMA is one of the world's largest producers of active ingredients for pesticides.

Producen, entre otras cosas, compuestos a base de cloro, fungicidas organoclorados, y sí, varios tipos de organofosforados.

They produce, among other things, chlorine-based compounds, organochlorine fungicides, and several types of organophosphates.

Algunos de estos compuestos, si se liberan en grandes cantidades durante un incendio industrial, pueden generar gases de combustión extremadamente tóxicos.

Some of these compounds, if released in large quantities during an industrial fire, can generate extremely toxic combustion gases.

No es arma química.

It's not a chemical weapon.

Pero el efecto sobre los pulmones y el sistema nervioso puede ser similar.

But the effect on the lungs and nervous system can be similar.

The distinction between 'chemical weapon' and 'toxic industrial chemical released by military strike' is legally significant but medically almost irrelevant.

Your lungs don't care about the legal category.

Exactamente.

And this is what the World Health Organization has tried to articulate in its guidelines on public health in armed conflict.

Y esto es lo que la Organización Mundial de la Salud ha intentado articular en sus directrices sobre salud pública en situaciones de conflicto armado.

The concept they use is 'chemical incident,' which is broader than 'chemical weapon' and specifically includes these kinds of accidental releases or releases induced by military strikes on industrial infrastructure.

El concepto que usan es el de 'chemical incident', incidente químico, que es más amplio que el de arma química y que incluye precisamente este tipo de liberaciones accidentales o inducidas por ataques militares sobre infraestructura industrial.

So historically, when has the international community actually managed to enforce any kind of protection for industrial chemical sites during conflict?

Because my honest answer from years of reporting is: almost never effectively.

La verdad es que tienes razón, y es una de las grandes vergüenzas del derecho internacional humanitario moderno.

You're right, and it's one of the great shames of modern international humanitarian law.

El caso más claro de intento de protección fue durante la guerra de los Balcanes.

The clearest case of attempted protection was during the Balkans war.

En 1999, la OTAN atacó una planta petroquímica en Pancevo, Serbia.

In 1999, NATO struck a petrochemical plant in Pancevo, Serbia.

Se liberaron enormes cantidades de dicloroetileno, amoníaco y cloruro de vinilo.

Enormous quantities of dichloroethylene, ammonia, and vinyl chloride were released.

El programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Medio Ambiente documentó la contaminación durante años.

The UN Environment Programme documented the contamination for years.

Pero nadie rindió cuentas.

But nobody was held accountable.

Pancevo.

I remember that.

And the downstream health data from that region was genuinely alarming.

Elevated rates of respiratory disease, liver damage, and some studies suggesting increased cancer incidence in the following decade.

And that came from an alliance that prides itself on trying to follow the laws of armed conflict.

A ver, lo que aprendemos de Pancevo, de Ucrania, de lo que está pasando ahora en Israel, es que el problema no es solo la intención del atacante.

What we learn from Pancevo, from Ukraine, from what's happening now in Israel, is that the problem isn't just the attacker's intention.

Es la estructura misma de la guerra industrial moderna.

It's the very structure of modern industrial warfare.

Cuando un país concentra su producción química en grandes plantas, esas plantas se convierten inevitablemente en vulnerabilidades estratégicas y en riesgos para la salud pública al mismo tiempo.

When a country concentrates its chemical production in large plants, those plants inevitably become both strategic vulnerabilities and public health risks at the same time.

Es una contradicción estructural que nadie sabe cómo resolver.

It's a structural contradiction nobody knows how to resolve.

There's something almost paradoxical about it.

The same global agrochemical supply chain that helps feed billions of people becomes, under conditions of modern conflict, a potential instrument of mass poisoning.

Not through any deliberate chemical weapons program.

Just through the collision of industrial geography and military strategy.

Y hay una dimensión de salud global que también me parece importante mencionar.

And there's a global health dimension worth mentioning.

ADAMA no solo produce para Israel.

ADAMA doesn't just produce for Israel.

Produce para mercados en todo el mundo, incluyendo países en vías de desarrollo donde los agricultores dependen de sus productos.

It produces for markets worldwide, including developing countries where farmers depend on its products.

Si la cadena de producción se interrumpe por ataques militares continuados, el efecto en la seguridad alimentaria global puede ser significativo.

If the production chain is disrupted by sustained military attacks, the effect on global food security can be significant.

La salud no empieza y termina en la proximidad física de la bomba.

Health doesn't start and end at the immediate blast radius.

That is a point I genuinely hadn't thought through clearly enough.

The disruption of agrochemical supply chains as a secondary health consequence of conflict.

Crop protection chemicals become unavailable or too expensive, harvests fail or are significantly reduced, and you end up with nutritional deficits in communities that are entirely remote from the original conflict.

That's the kind of cascading effect that never gets attributed to the right cause.

Bueno, y eso conecta con algo que los epidemiólogos llaman los determinantes sociales de la salud en tiempos de guerra.

And that connects to what epidemiologists call the social determinants of health in wartime.

El problema no es solo el gas tóxico que respiras en el momento del ataque.

The problem isn't just the toxic gas you breathe at the moment of the attack.

Es la malnutrición que viene después, el colapso de los sistemas sanitarios, el estrés crónico y sus efectos sobre el sistema inmunitario, la pérdida de acceso a medicamentos básicos.

It's the malnutrition that follows, the collapse of health systems, chronic stress and its effects on the immune system, loss of access to basic medicines.

La guerra destruye la salud de maneras que los hospitales de campaña no pueden ni empezar a tratar.

War destroys health in ways that field hospitals can't even begin to treat.

I spent time embedded in Afghanistan, and the statistic that always stayed with me was this: more Afghan civilians died of treatable infectious diseases during the conflict years than from direct violence.

Cholera, typhoid, preventable maternal deaths.

Because the health infrastructure had collapsed.

The bullet doesn't have to find you for the war to kill you.

Lo que describes en Afganistán es el patrón universal.

What you're describing in Afghanistan is the universal pattern.

Es exactamente lo que vemos en Gaza, en Sudán, en Yemen.

It's exactly what we see in Gaza, in Sudan, in Yemen.

Los datos de mortalidad directa por combate son siempre una fracción pequeña de la mortalidad total atribuible al conflicto.

Direct combat mortality figures are always a small fraction of total conflict-attributable mortality.

La mayor parte de las muertes son invisibles porque ocurren en hospitales sin medicamentos, en partos sin asistencia, en niños que mueren de deshidratación porque el sistema de agua potable fue destruido meses antes.

Most deaths are invisible because they happen in hospitals without medicine, in unattended births, in children dying of dehydration because the water system was destroyed months earlier.

So let me ask you something.

Because you've followed the Iran conflict closely, and you've been thinking about this longer than most.

Is there any realistic mechanism to protect chemical and industrial infrastructure from becoming health weapons in this conflict, or in conflicts more generally?

Mira, hay dos respuestas.

There are two answers.

La respuesta honesta y la respuesta diplomática.

The honest answer and the diplomatic answer.

La respuesta diplomática es que necesitamos un protocolo internacional específico para instalaciones industriales peligrosas, con zonas de exclusión verificadas, con sistemas de alerta temprana, con mecanismos de inspección durante los conflictos.

The diplomatic answer is that we need a specific international protocol for dangerous industrial installations, with verified exclusion zones, early warning systems, and inspection mechanisms during conflicts.

La respuesta honesta es que en el mundo en que vivimos actualmente, donde los tratados multilaterales llevan años en crisis, eso es una fantasía casi completa.

The honest answer is that in the world we currently live in, where multilateral treaties have been in crisis for years, that's almost complete fantasy.

I appreciate the distinction.

And look, I've sat across the table from enough diplomats and generals to know that the honest answer is usually the one nobody says in public.

Es que hay un precedente parcial interesante, sin embargo.

There is an interesting partial precedent, though.

Después de la primera guerra del Golfo, las Naciones Unidas crearon la Comisión de Compensación de las Naciones Unidas, que pagó indemnizaciones por daños ambientales y de salud pública, incluyendo los efectos de los incendios de los pozos de petróleo.

After the first Gulf War, the United Nations created the UN Compensation Commission, which paid compensation for environmental and public health damages, including the effects of the oil well fires.

No fue perfecto ni mucho menos.

It wasn't perfect by any means.

Pero fue un reconocimiento explícito de que los daños ambientales y sanitarios de la guerra generan obligaciones legales y económicas.

But it was an explicit recognition that the environmental and health damages of war generate legal and economic obligations.

The extraordinary thing is that even that limited mechanism, the idea that you can hold a state financially responsible for the public health consequences of its military actions on industrial infrastructure, was considered radical at the time.

And thirty years later it's still not standard practice.

It's still exceptional.

La verdad es que creo que lo que estamos viendo ahora, con este ataque a la planta de ADAMA, con los ataques a infraestructuras industriales en Ucrania, con los daños a instalaciones portuarias e industriales en Gaza, es que estamos entrando en una era donde la guerra de infraestructuras va a ser cada vez más común.

What we're seeing now, with this attack on the ADAMA plant, with attacks on industrial infrastructure in Ukraine, with damage to industrial and port facilities in Gaza, is that we're entering an era where infrastructure warfare will be increasingly common.

Y el coste sanitario de esa tendencia va a recaer, como siempre, sobre las poblaciones civiles que viven cerca de esas instalaciones.

And the health cost of that trend will fall, as always, on the civilian populations who live near those facilities.

And those populations are almost never the ones who made the decisions that led to the war.

That's the part that gets me every time.

The people downwind of the ADAMA plant, the farmers in the surrounding communities, they're bearing the toxic burden of a geopolitical conflict that operates entirely above their heads.

Y eso, Fletcher, es aplicable a ambos lados del conflicto.

And that applies to both sides of the conflict.

Los agricultores israelíes que viven cerca de esa planta no eligieron esta guerra.

The Israeli farmers who live near that plant didn't choose this war.

Y los civiles iraníes que viven cerca de las instalaciones que Israel bombardea en respuesta tampoco la eligieron.

And the Iranian civilians who live near the installations Israel bombs in response didn't choose it either.

La salud pública es una de las pocas cosas que realmente trasciende las narrativas nacionales de quién tiene razón y quién no.

Public health is one of the few things that genuinely transcends national narratives about who is right and who is wrong.

I mean, that might be the most important thing we've said today.

The body doesn't distinguish between justified and unjustified violence.

Organophosphate toxicity doesn't care which flag is flying.

The epidemiology is perfectly impartial.

Bueno, para cerrar, yo creo que la pregunta que deberíamos dejar a los oyentes es esta: ¿cuándo empezamos a contabilizar los costes sanitarios de larga duración de los conflictos armados de la misma manera en que contabilizamos las bajas militares?

To close, the question I'd leave listeners with is this: when do we start accounting for the long-term health costs of armed conflicts the same way we account for military casualties?

Porque mientras sigamos midiendo las guerras solo por el número de soldados muertos y los kilómetros de territorio ganado, vamos a seguir ignorando el enorme coste sanitario que recae sobre las generaciones que vienen después.

Because as long as we measure wars only by soldiers killed and territory gained, we will keep ignoring the enormous health cost that falls on the generations that come after.

That is, I think, the right question.

And it's one that journalists, frankly, including me, have done a poor job of keeping in front of the public.

The after-story of conflict health is almost always slower, quieter, and more complicated than the news cycle tolerates.

But it's where the real numbers are.

A ver, en Twilingua siempre decimos que el idioma te abre puertas.

We always say on Twilingua that language opens doors.

Pero la salud pública también te las abre: cuando entiendes cómo los conflictos afectan a los cuerpos de la gente, no solo a los tanques y a los presupuestos de defensa, empiezas a leer las noticias de manera completamente diferente.

But public health opens them too: when you understand how conflicts affect people's bodies, not just tanks and defense budgets, you start reading the news in a completely different way.

Y creo que esa es una razón de peso para seguir escuchando y seguir aprendiendo.

And I think that's a compelling reason to keep listening and keep learning.

Well put.

One missile, one chemical plant, one hazardous materials warning.

And we're talking about the Gulf War, Bhopal, the Geneva Conventions, the global agrochemical supply chain, and the invisible casualties of every conflict since the Industrial Revolution.

That's why we do this.

Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.