Responding to a formal complaint from the child advocacy group "Casa Alianza", a branch of the New York based "Covenant House", the Costa Rican Ministry of Health emitted an April 27th, 1988 order to the subsidiary of the St. Paul, Minnesota based company to "proceed to change the labels of the cited product within the prudential period of fifteen working days". H.B. Fuller's operations for the whole of Latin America are based in San Jose.

The Director of the Registry and Controls section of the Ministry, Ernesto Hodgson Dixon, also ordered that "the labels of the products which are actually in the national market" also be changed within the same period "from the date of issuance of this resolution".

Although they are chemicals, solvent based shoe glues are the principal "drug" of choice amongst the estimated 40 million street children in Latin America. Street children, often as young as just 5 or 6 years old, inhale the potent solvent based glues to try and suppress feelings of hunger, cold and abandonment. The toluene or cyclohexane solvents used in shoe glues cause permanent and irreversible brain damage in the pre-pubescent street children.

Casa Alianza has led a seven year campaign against the H.B. Fuller company and other multinationals, trying to halt the use of dangerous solvents in such readily available over the counter products. The global attention brought to this campaign has resulted in major articles against H.B. Fuller in the New York Times as well as major television reports on US, Spanish and British stations. A federal lawsuit was brought against H.B. Fuller in the Minnesota state courts in 1996, accusing the H.B. Fuller company in the wrongful death of Joel Linares, a 16 year street child from Guatemala who died from kidney failure as a result of sniffing Resistol glue. The case, presented by Austin (Texas) lawyer Scott Hendler, was eventually dismissed on geographical grounds without responding to it's content. A further lawsuit against the billion dollar company is reportedly planned.

-H.B. Fuller has stated publicly that they comply with all the laws in the countries where they operate. This is obviously just another un-truth as Fuller has now come unstuck once again, commented Bruce Harris, the Executive Director of Latin American Programs for Covenant House. As a result of Harris' and Covenant House's complaint to the Ministry of Health in this Central American nation, it was discovered that H.B. Fuller Costa Rica has been functioning without an "Operating Permit" as required by Costa Rican law.
-So much for truth and compliance, commented Harris. The Fortune 500 multinational was, until recently, headed by Walter Kissling, a Costa Rican.

-This stuff is worse than heroin, explained famed neurologist Herb Schaumberg, referring to the solvent based glues in a recent international television production on the plight of "resistoleros", as Honduran street children are generically called after H.B. Fuller's Resistol product.
-With heroin you get addicted, but it doesn't destroy your brain like this stuff does. This is very insidious. The children do not realize it is happening to them.

The Latin American branch of Covenant House annually serves more than 4,000 street children in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, almost all of whom have consumed solvent based glues.
-We are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year treating children who have been permanently damaged as a result of multinationals going after high profit margins at whatever social cost, continues the British born Harris. H.B. Fuller reports 13% of global sales yet 27% of global profits from its Latin American operations.
-It's about time that companies put people before profits, demanded Harris, who has been successful in pushing for stricter legislation in all Central American countries.

-The labeling requirements introduced here in Costa Rica were as a result of our working with the Ministry of Health, helping them to assume their responsibility for the street children of their country. Now they must enforce their laws against renegade multinationals who are only interested in the almighty dollar at whatever cost.