According to France 24, a French court has blocked a trial investigating the use of chlordécone, a toxic insecticide, in the French West Indies. Despite being labeled possibly carcinogenic in nineteen seventy-nine, the chemical was used from nineteen seventy-two until nineteen ninety-three — thanks to a regulatory loophole that allowed it to circumvent a nineteen ninety ban. The blocked trial closes the door on investigation into a health scandal spanning two decades.

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