Cancers at Saint-Nazaire: Nicolas Broutin protected by the State
The Splann and Blast media conducted an incredible investigation that is truly chilling. The video report and the many testimonies they received confirm a feeling of impunity on the part of Nicolas Broutin and the company Yara France, and on the other hand, a feeling of frustration, anger and fear. Here is the unedited text version of this video, which I strongly recommend you watch if you are interested in or worried about the subject. Thank you to them for this fantastic piece of investigative work ! Cancers at Saint-Nazaire: Nicolas Broutin protected by the State…
When you think of Saint-Nazaire, you might imagine its beaches, the carlets lining the coastline, its submarine base or its cable-stayed bridge, the largest in France. But Saint-Nazaire and the surrounding area are also home to the Chantiers de l’Atlantique shipyard, the country’s industrial flagship, which produces huge ocean liners such as the iconic Queen Mary II. It’s also home to industries such as the TotalEnergies refinery in Donges and the Yara chemical fertiliser plant in Montoir-de-Bretagne.
Industries that contribute to the region’s economic success, but are also responsible for environmental disasters and damage the health of their employees and the general public. Pollution that industrialists try to conceal without the public authorities taking action commensurate with the seriousness of the problem.
This is what escaped from the Donges refinery on 1 May. The fire broke out in the furnace of a diesel desulphurisation unit at 4am.
An acceptable risk + An acceptable risk + yet another acceptable risk,
it all ends up being unacceptable to the public !
Marie-Aline le Cler – President of AEDZRP
The only thing I fear is that one day someone will say to me :”‘You’ve got cancer !” I wouldn’t be surprised. MARIE, SUB-CONTRACTOR AT CHANTIERS DE L’ATLANTIQUE
Another problem is the plant’s smoke, which exceeds authorised emissions of fine particles by half. The Yara site is also a champion for phosphorus and nitrogen discharges, which encourage the proliferation of green algae.
In recent years, it’s really been the human barrier that’s been doing the work !
Philippe Nicolas, employee and CSEC-CGT secretary of the Yara group
The site produces (and stores) ammonium nitrate, a chemical element used as a component in fertilisers, which is currently in the spotlight.
If this plant exploded, everything would be destroyed within a 5 km radius, as Paul Poulain demonstrated !
Mathilde and Mélanie, residents of Saint-Nazaire.
Blast – in partnership with the independent Breton media Splann – reveals the inner workings of this health and environmental scandal. Within a ten-kilometre radius of Saint-Nazaire, 6 industrial sites are classified as Seveso, meaning that they produce or store substances that are hazardous to humans and the environment. This is the case at Yara, world leader in synthetic fertilisers, which uses large quantities of toxic products such as ammonia and phosphorus.
The problem : suffering from structural under-investment, the plant, which has been in operation since 1972, is now so dilapidated that it has on several occasions caused discharges into the environment.
Since the early 2000s, our biggest problem has been sewage discharges – industrial sewers and storm sewers – where we didn’t meet the standards for nitrogen and phosphate discharges.
Philippe Nicolas, employee and CSEC-CGT secretary for the Yara group
There have been leaks of sulphuric acid on the site, which were not contained in time. The most recent accident was a power failure that caused the ammonia tank to heat up, and it took us two hours to find a back-up generator.
Thierry Noguet, Mayor of Montoir-de-Bretagne
The Norwegian multinational, which bought the plant in 2004, was ordered by the government to comply with safety regulations. After receiving a series of formal notices, the management preferred to pay financial penalties totalling 700,000 euros rather than carry out the work required to bring the plant into compliance, until a tragedy occurred.
On 24 October 2023, a 50-year-old subcontractor died on site following a cardiorespiratory arrest. Six days later, management announced the closure of the fertiliser production unit, leaving only the storage unit.
The coincidence of this death, which Yara kept quiet about, and the announcement of the closure confirmed the suspicions of certain employees, associations and the Montoir-de-Bretagne town council. They believe that the company’s management deliberately allowed the situation to deteriorate so as not to have to pay out the 35 to 40 million euros needed to bring the plant up to standard.
We could have maintained it over the years. The problem is that we’ve mainly been curative. I’d like to put it to you like this: ‘We’ve put a band-aid on a wooden leg’. That’s mainly what happened, because the less we invested, the better it was. It’s the working conditions that have deteriorated dramatically, because we’ve known for a long time that the site was on the chopping block. But when it’s like that, people are always doing more, in ever worsening conditions. Because the plant is being maintained less and less well, the equipment is ageing and that’s a shame, because now people are saying ‘It’s all for this! All the effort we’ve put in over the last ten years to get to this point is a bit hopeless. And that’s when we realise that we’ve been taken for a ride.
Philippe Nicolas, employee and CSEC-CGT secretary of the Yara group
“On the other hand, I called them rogues”, because when you have regular inspections and you don’t take the necessary steps to comply with standards, you have to pay penalty notices because the financial power is such that they prefer to pay penalty notices rather than put perhaps 100 million on the table to do the work to standards that are acceptable to everyone. That’s something I’d always criticise !
THIERRY NOGUET, MAYOR OF MONTOIR-DE-BRETAGNE
Worse still, the company stores a potentially lethal substance: ammonium nitrate.
The Yara plant could store up to 112,000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, which is 40 times the size of Beirut.
Mathilde and Mélanie, residents of Saint-Nazaire
The shockwave was felt for dozens of kilometres around.
…and it is regularly served with formal notice for failing to comply with safety measures. If this plant were to explode, as Paul Poulain showed, everything within a 5 kilometre radius would be destroyed, so there would be nothing left! And that’s when we realised that our homes and our children’s school are within this radius, and that’s when we started talking to other parents from the school. We said we wanted to do something, we couldn’t let this happen. We residents, citizens, families in fact, with or without children, but in any case we are also concerned in the end, because we are in the area. Around Yara, we’re close to this site and, above all, we have to deal with pollution, air pollution, water pollution and… a major risk of explosion that is not just a fable, but a proven potential.
MATHILDE AND MÉLANIE, RESIDENTS OF SAINT-NAZAIRE
I’ve alerted the DREAL on several occasions. For them, the risk of explosion is a risk that is not even measured in this company and I say to myself that this risk not being taken into account, I find the attitude of the State services on this subject a little light. Personally, I think we need to denounce this and also force the industrialists who are a bit on the fringe to comply with the standards, which is what we tried to do with the environmental associations in relation to Yara. Employment is certainly important, but it must not be at the expense of workers’ health. Quite simply. Workers and also local residents, because the fallout from Yara, the discharges into the water, the discharges into the atmosphere, also means that children are exposed to asthma attacks, or even more, so we really need to be vigilant about this.
Thierry Noguet, Mayor of Montoir-de-Bretagne
For the past ten years or so, a handful of community activists have been fighting to shed light on the causes of this industrial pollution and its impact on public health. Such is the case of Marie-Aline and Michel Le Cler, who live just a few hundred metres from the TotalEnergies refinery in Donges. In the course of their struggle, they have become leading figures on the issue in the region and in the media.
It’s true that in Donges, unfortunately, it’s always been the town that smelt. But now, over the last few months, we’ve seen an increase in these incidents.
Michel le Cler, President of the ADZRP association
In 2013, they asked the government for an epidemiological study to identify the pollution they were in contact with and its impact on their health. To no avail. It was only after 8 years of fighting that they obtained an area study based on piecemeal data that did not take into account certain pollutants, despite their proven carcinogenic properties.
From the outset, when the announcement was made in autumn 2021 of this area study, our associations immediately said, we’re signing up. We’re applying to be included. And then, from the outset, once we had been included, our plan was that this area study should not be a cut-price study, that it should be truly representative of what was happening in the area.
We looked at the communes, our respective communes. We looked for all the companies that were there, all the ICPE (classified for the environment) companies, which means that they were likely to have an impact on the environment. So we listed these companies and then looked at their activities, the products they might use, and the discharges they were likely to emit into the air, soil and water, and little by little we put together this list, which we submitted to the entire Strategic Orientation Committee.
We asked the government department to issue a prefectoral decree so that this questionnaire would be a constraint for companies, i.e. as part of the area study, we asked that companies be obliged to return the questionnaire. We felt that this was really fundamental! We were told ‘No, no, no, there would be no prefectoral decree, it’s not possible! We clearly understood that he had no intention of forcing manufacturers to respond.
Apart from the large CVSOs for which it was essential to have the data, Yara voluntarily did not respond. So it’s clear to us that there was a serious unwillingness on the part of the manufacturers to put their data on the table and to do so transparently. So obviously, the data that was collected was incomplete and partial, and it was this data that was used to model industrial pollution in the area.
We were also quick to point out that for each industry, every time we investigated the environmental studies that were carried out for large industrial companies, we were always told about ‘acceptable risks’. We were within the limits of acceptable risk. Except that an acceptable risk, plus an acceptable risk, plus an acceptable risk, ends up no longer being acceptable to the public !
Marie-Aline le Cler, President of the ADZRP association
Yet living and working here means being exposed to a much higher risk of cancer than the rest of the country. People living in the area are 42% more likely than the national average to die before the age of 65, according to a study by the Pays de la Loire Regional Health Observatory (ORS). But for the former Deputy Prefect of Saint-Nazaire, Michel Bergue, the explanation is simple :
Cancer is caused by smoking and alcohol consumption. At present, we don’t know enough to be able to determine precisely how much of the observed incidence is due to environmental factors.
Michel Bergue, Deputy Prefect of Saint-Nazaire
The DREAL is in charge. So the Prefect is in charge of the project. The person who was at the origin of the zone study when it was launched, he repeated it to us, he hammered it into our heads: ‘I’m the one who pays, I’m the one who decides! ‘It’s me who pays, it’s me who decides’. It was as clear as that. Those were his words. Every time we put forward our proposals and requests, we were told: ‘I’m the one who pays, I’m the one who decides!
What we want is to have a system that will bring together all those who wish to participate, but with the same place in the system. In other words, every voice will count, but with the same weight. In other words, we can’t have someone saying, ‘I’m the one who pays, I’m the one who decides’.
It’s clear that these industrialists have always put profits before investments. And now, by dint of all these delays, everyone is paying the price, i.e. Total has for some time now only acted on formal notice from the State, as Yara has been doing for years. We’re waiting and waiting and then, by dint of putting it off, it’s all over!
Marie-Aline le Cler, President of the ADZRP association
Aside from the dilapidated state of the plants, why are such health and human tragedies occurring ? And how do you explain the fact that the state allows management to act with impunity ?
There was the great invention of subcontracting in the 1980s, which meant that we went from having a relatively stable, skilled workforce at the Donges refinery and elsewhere, with equivalent, identical social conditions. And then, of course, to cut costs in the 80s, we opted for subcontracting. So a whole range of refining jobs were subcontracted to a multitude of companies. In the space of 20-30 years, we’re going to find ourselves with 25-30 collective agreements working side by side on the site today. There are workers who have been on the site for a long time, others who arrived two days ago, and many of them have very insecure employment contracts, with very high levels of fixed-term contracts and temporary work. So already, there’s the choice of subcontracting to reduce the site’s wage bill. This is bound to have an impact on working conditions, social conditions and safety conditions.
Here’s a figure : in 2002 there were 14,000 of us on the site and in 2002 there were 19,000 visits to the infirmary. That’s why subcontracting exists, because the clients, whether at the Atlantic shipyards or in the building industry, have only one objective: to cut costs and take their toll on the subcontracting companies, and therefore externalise the risk.
There is also an ideological battle being waged by the employers, which consists of pitting employees against each other and breaking them up, and so they have tested out new forms of social domination and risk outsourcing at the shipyard.
André Fadda, former CGT delegate at Chantiers de l’Atlantique
The profit rationale that drives cascading subcontracting has spread well beyond these industrial sectors, but when you’re working with hazardous substances, accidents can be fatal.
Massive recourse to subcontracting, with employees who don’t master the French language, employees who aren’t trained, employees who aren’t informed of the organisation of the work and the presence of other activities that are potentially accident-prone, even though they are carrying out their task, is what will lead to tragedies, disasters and accidents in the workplace.
By definition, safety is an item that costs money, that doesn’t make money, and so when you have an economic constraint or a desire to maximise profit, however you look at it, the element on which you’re going to try to make savings is safety.
You can’t make savings on supplies, you have to pay for them, you have to at least pay your employee, there are rules, there are conditions on safety, it’s much easier to cut corners and make penny-pinching savings and unfortunately it’s often when it’s not the organisation that’s at fault, this desire to make penny-pinching savings results in accidents.
Etienne Boittin, Lawyer specialising in personal injury law
20,000 : this is the number of foreign employees declared between January 2016 and June 2019 at the Atlantic, Airbus and Total shipyards, according to a study published in 2023. Workers who generally stay no longer than 6 months, taking with them the secret of their exposure and state of health. This lack of traceability also prevents the collection of data that would enable the risks to employees to be identified, and masks the responsibility of companies.
When you have colleagues with very chaotic careers, who have worked in many different companies, who don’t even know what chemicals they’ve been exposed to, because a subcontracted colleague who arrives at a chemical plant for three or six months to do some work, frankly has no idea what chemicals he’s been exposed to.
David Arnould, CGT delegate at the TotalEnergies refinery in Donges.
Today, the damage caused by welding fumes is invisible, because there are many employees who have contracted occupational diseases, or real cancers: bladder cancer, for example, from welders who worked for a very long time on stainless steel, or lung cancers, well yes, there are a lot of them, but they’re never counted, they’re invisible. The hidden phase of the workplace hecatomb.
André Fadda, former CGT delegate at Chantiers de l’Atlantique
I’ve been working on the site for 33 years with dangerous products, without any protection, because at the time we weren’t given any and we weren’t told that the product was dangerous either. Today, I know, but the only thing I can say is that one day I’ll be told, ‘You’ve got cancer! I wouldn’t be surprised.
When you work in a kitchen, it’s all very well working next to a welder, who has a mask and helmet to protect himself from welding fumes, but we’re not protected. We use chemicals that are often very dangerous. They can be CMR, in other words, carcinogenic.
One day, I arrived at my depot to look for equipment, in particular products, and my manager was emptying the room, telling me that we wouldn’t have this product any more, even though it was the product we’d been using for about 15 years to clean stainless steel in the kitchens, because it was CMR. So we’d been using a product that was bad for us for 15 years. I think that everyone who lives in the Greater Nazaire area has one or more relatives who have had cancer or will have cancer in the future.
Marie, temporary worker at Chantiers de l’Atlantique
When you see who is building this ship, in the conditions in which these ships are built, even today, and at what cost, it’s clear that this is the perverse side of the naval industry.
André Fadda, former CGT delegate at Chantiers de l’Atlantique
You realise that naivety is no longer an option. You can’t keep hoping every time, you can’t trust the company. And we can see the limits of the State. And somewhere along the line, I would have said that it’s up to the State to act. There’s no doubt that at local level, the prefecture has issued a large number of formal notices.
The company has been made to face up to its responsibilities on numerous occasions.So we can expect nothing from either the company or the local authorities. That’s really why we’ve sent our petition, not only to the prefecture, but also to the Ministry of Industry and the Environment. On a national scale, that’s where it counts !
Mathilde and Mélanie, residents of Saint-Nazaire
There is still a long way to go to get companies and public authorities to prevent these accidents and recognise exposure. To follow the associations’ fight and find out more about this pollution, you can follow the investigation on the Splann and Blast websites.