This is another matter linked to depakine, this antiepileptic drug which has already made headlines. A mother of two children “suffering from neurobehavioral disorders” who worked, during her pregnancies, “opposite” the Sanofi factory in Mourenx (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) producing the drug Dépakine, filed a complaint in Paris, announced Monday association of victims’ families.
She filed a complaint on November 15 for involuntary injuries resulting in an ITT of more than three months, endangering the lives of others and failure to report adverse effects, said her lawyer Charles Joseph-Oudin. “There is no other possible cause” at the origin of his children’s troubles than the toxic emissions from the factory in the air she breathed, he says.
Unusual toxic releases of sodium valproate
Asked by AFP, Sanofi indicated that it was “unaware of this procedure”. “At this stage, none” of the studies already carried out or in progress “has made it possible to highlight a particular risk” linked to “atmospheric emissions” generated by the manufacture of the drug, affirmed the pharmaceutical group.
An investigating judge from the public health center of the Paris judicial court has been investigating the toxic releases from this factory, in the Lacq basin, since August 2022, for “endangering others” and “the offense of obstructing an authorized agent », after the revelation by the France Nature Environnement association (FNE) non-standard toxic releases of sodium valproate.
This drug, marketed under the name Dépakine by the French giant Sanofi, is an antiepileptic whose risks for the child – malformation and developmental disorders such as autism – are already well known if it is taken by the pregnant mother.
“I am a scientist. I can’t confirm anything. I wonder about the link between my exposure and the disorders observed in my children” born in 2014 and 2016, explains the complainant, aged 37, in the newspaper Le Monde, which revealed the complaint. She hopes that justice can “answer (her) questions and investigate beyond (her) case into what could potentially be a health scandal”.
“A cluster” in the region?
According to a press release from the president of the Association of Parents of Children Suffering from Anti-Convulsant Syndrome (APESAC)Marine Martin, her “depakineemia rate” turned out to be “positive as in many employees”.
“It is unacceptable that here again Sanofi displays a denial of its responsibility in the toxic discharges that it dumped between 2013 and 2019 in the Lacq basin (Mourenx)”, she was indignant, assuming that there is “probably a cluster in this region”.
The action of this mother “confirms the validity of the complaint filed by the workers’ unions who are the first people exposed and the sentinels concerning the endangerment of local residents”, according to Me François Lafforgue, lawyer for the CGT local and the National Federation of Chemical Industries CGT, civil parties behind the opening of judicial information in August 2022.