Report: Lead Recycled For Car Batteries Is Poisoning People

Reporting by the Times shows that automakers are contracting with companies to recycle lead in countries that have lax regulatory environments in terms of pollution. Countries like Nigeria. These companies are apparently recycling lead in a heavily polluting manner and factory workers and residents of areas near the factories are getting sick from lead poisoning. The Times found people with blood-lead levels four or five times the amount that's considered to be lead poisoning.

From the Times:

Dust and soil samples showed lead levels up to 186 times as high as what is generally recognized as hazardous. More than 20,000 people live within a mile of Ogijo’s factories. Experts say the test results indicate that many of them are probably being poisoned.

Lead poisoning worldwide is estimated to cause far more deaths each year than malaria and H.I.V./AIDS combined. It causes seizures, strokes, blindness and lifelong intellectual disabilities. The World Health Organization makes clear that  no level of lead in the body is safe.

The poisoning of Ogijo is representative of a preventable public health disaster unfolding in communities across Africa. One factory’s lead soot falls onto tomato and pineapple farms near a village in Togo. Another factory has contaminated a soccer field in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s largest city. In Ghana, a recycler melts lead next door to a family’s chicken coop.

Factories in and around Ogijo recycle more lead than anywhere else in Africa. The United States imported enough lead from Nigeria alone last year to make millions of batteries. Manufacturers that use Nigerian lead make batteries for major carmakers and retailers such as Amazon, Lowe’s and Walmart.

The auto industry touts battery recycling as an environmental success story. Lead from old batteries, when recycled cleanly and safely, can be melted down and reused again and again with minimal pollution.

But companies have rejected proposals to use only lead that is certified as safely produced. Automakers have excluded lead from their environmental policies.

Battery makers rely on the assurances of trading companies that lead is recycled cleanly. These intermediaries rely on perfunctory audits that make recommendations, not demands.

The industry, in effect, built a global supply system in which everyone involved can say someone else is responsible for oversight.

The NYT puts it in perspective:

To understand the extent of Ogijo’s contamination, consider what happened more than a decade ago in Vernon, Calif., the site of one of the worst cases of lead pollution in modern American history. Soil testing around a recycling plant revealed high lead levels, including at a nearby preschool. Officials called the area an environmental disaster. The factory closed. The cleanup continues today.

Soil at the California preschool contained lead at 95 parts per million.

In Ogijo, soil at one school had more than 1,900 parts per million.

One of the worst offenders in Nigeria, according to the Times, is True Metals, which has supplied lead to Ford, GM, and Tesla.

The issue has gone back to 2010 -- one worker had such high lead levels doctors were shocked he was alive. That factory remained open following a study conducted about lead pollution that year. It was selling batteries to BMW, Volvo, and Volkswagen.

The Times reached out to automakers for comment and only heard back from BMW, Volkswagen, and Subaru. BMW and Volkswagen said they'd "look into it" and Subaru said it does not used recycled lead from Africa.

A representative of a battery industry group had this to say to the Times:

Roger Miksad, the president of Battery Council International, an industry group, said that American manufacturers got 85 percent of their lead from recyclers in North America, where regulations are generally strict.

As for the growing amount from overseas, he said his group condemns unacceptable practices and advises lead recyclers on how to improve conditions.

“But at the end of the day,” Mr. Miksad said, “it’s up to regional and local governments and regulators to enforce the laws in their countries.”

We'll point out that even if that figure of 85 percent is correct, that still means a lot of recycled lead is sourced from overseas. According to the Times, factories in Europe that recycle lead are often spotless, but the cost to recycle lead that cleanly is in the millions of dollars.

The Times reports that automakers often claim to be using clean recycling processes, even marketing their processes as clean and safe. In reality, at least some of the recycled lead is being sourced from factories that are polluting. Perhaps the OEMs are aware of the dirty conditions at these facilities -- and perhaps they are not. After all, the supply chain is complex and as the Times points out in the piece, it's possible, even likely, that automakers and battery producers don't know where the lead is coming from.