Firm resists tighter control on toxic glue: free-market supply abused by children in Central America

National Catholic Reporter, March 31, 1995 by Paul Jeffrey

GUATEMALA CITY -- They call it El Hoyo -- The Hole.

Tucked away in the back streets of Guatemala City, it's a section of town not featured on travel posters. Crammed side by side, the bars and brothels blare Mexican ranchero music while empty-eyed children lounge outside, their hands moving frequently to their mouths so they can inhale from a small jar or plastic bag. The containers hold a rubbery substance whose hallucinogenic fumes help the kids survive life in The Hole.

The children who live in The Hole represent a growing population of Latin America's youth. According to UNICEF, 100 million children live on the streets of the world's cities, an inordinate half of them in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Half the region's children are poor and a majority of the region's poor are children, a growing number of whom end up on the streets of cities from Monterrey to Montevideo. Rather than fighting to survive in families torn by poverty, alcoholism and abuse, they prefer to fend for themselves on the streets. Although it's a harsh environment, the kids learn to cope.

Glue helps. The narcotic of choice for street kids throughout the region is shoemaker's glue, a psychologically addictive substance which, when inhaled, provides an instant escape from the environment of fear. The glue's potent fumes ward off the pangs of hunger and provide warmth in a world of rejection.

A principal ingredient of the glue is toluene, a sweet-smelling, petroleum-derived neurotoxin. When inhaled, it goes straight to the frontal lobes and to the areas that control emotions; it turns off the brain's connection to reality, neutralizing stress, pain, fear and memory.

It's the perfect drug for street kids. It's comforting. It takes the place of parental affection. It also makes you brave; while observing street kids snatch watches and handbags on the streets of Tegucigalpa, Hector Palacios, a street educator for Casa Alianza, the Latin American program of New York-based Covenant House, told NCR, "Look at their eyes or smell their clothes. It's glue that gives them the bravery to do that."

Yet toluene takes a toll. Occasional inhaling produces nosebleeds, rashes and headaches. Long-term usage typically results in irreversible neurological damage, kidney or liver failure, paralysis and death.

After years of abusing glue on the streets of Guatemala City, Joel Linares died of kidney failure in 1993, allegedly the result of chronic toluene exposure. On Jan. 3, in U.S. District Court in Dallas, two toxic-injury attorneys -- Scott Hendler of Austin, Texas, and Michael Brickman of Charleston, S.C. -- filed a wrongful death suit on behalf of Julia Polanco, the mother of the 14-year-old Guatemalan boy.

According to Hendler, the suit alleges that officials of the Minneapolis-based H.B. Fuller Co., which manufactures and markets glue in Guatemala, contributed to Linares' death by "designing, manufacturing and marketing a product that was an attractive nuisance to children. They knew that and they continued to sell it without taking any steps to prevent it from falling into the hands of children."

The suit, which may be delayed and moved to Minnesota, has important backers. The head of Covenant House, Sr. Mary Rose McGeady, told NCR she was asking what she called "the most prestigious law firm in the United States" -- Cravath, Swaine and Moore, a New York legal firm that represents Covenant House - to file a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the plaintiff. "We wouldn't do this if there was any other route," McGeady said, "but the company is simply stonewalling."

Referring to an H.B. Fuller-funded faculty position at the University of Minnesota, McGeady said, "It's incredible to me that a company that funds an ethics chair at a university could be so unethical in everyday practice."

Asked if such criticism of a large corporation could hurt fundraising efforts for her $70 million-a-year Catholic charity, McGeady said, "You can't let anything get in the way of doing what's right. And we are right on this one. I don't care if I never get another penny from Minnesota. If we do what's right for kids, then the Lord is on our side."

Deterring abuse

As inhalant abuse increased visibly throughout Central America in the 1980s, particularly among younger children, organizations started treatment programs for chronic sniffers. Yet the success rate is low. Casa Alianza, one of few such programs in the region, claims a 35 percent success rate.

Given the failure of education and treatment programs to make a dent in a growing problem, activists decided to take on the companies that produce and market glue. Corporate officials said it wasn't their fault if someone abused a product intended for legitimate use.

Yet one U.S. corporation decided 27 years ago that it could do something. The Testors Corp. of Rockford, Ill., became concerned in the 1960s about complaints that its toluene-based model airplane glue was being sniffed by U.S. children. In 1968, after testing 94 possible additives, it decided to add oil of mustard, a foul-smelling additive that's included on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's "Generally Regarded as Safe" list. Testors reported that sales dropped dramatically, as did complaints from police and physicians that the product was being sniffed.