The banana industry's answer to this dissipation has been to apply pesticides frequently. Airplanes drop toxic chemicals regularly from the air. Pesticides fall on the plants, but also on workers, the ground and irrigation canals and streams. Workers apply pesticides to the ground around the plants. These chemicals seep into the ground with every rainfall.
Pesticides also get into water that is used to wash bananas in the packing plants.
That water then flows back into the irrigation canals. Plastic bags with insecticide cover all the banana bunches from their inception. The chemical leaks off the bags in rain storms and flows into the ground and water. In the early 1990s, almost 100 square miles of Costa Rican grazing land and forests in the northeastern section of the country were bought by banana companies like Chiquita and turned into banana fields. By 1995, that number had jumped to 131,117.5 acres, an increase of more than 85 percent.