Recycling Car Batteries Can Come at an Environmental Cost

"Of the 70 people whose blood was tested as part of the investigation, 70% had amounts of lead in their bloodstream that were described as "harmful," including all of the people who worked in recycling facilities. The Times also compared their findings to the lead pollution caused by a now-shuttered auto battery recycling plant in Vernon, California. The investigation noted that soil at a school in Ogijo had around 20 times as much lead as a preschool near the plant in Vernon."

"There are ways to avoid situations like this; as the authors of the Times article point out, there are environmentally friendly ways of recycling lead that do not lead to widespread pollution and health problems for people in the vicinity. The United Nations Environmental Programme has explored different ways of reaching this very goal. And as Goodman and Fitzgibbon point out in another article for the Times, tracing environmentally hazardous lead can also change the behavior of some companies"

Battery recycling in Ogijo, Nigeria generates extensive lead pollution that contaminates soil and residents. Seventy percent of seventy people tested had lead levels described as harmful, and all recycling workers showed elevated exposure. Soil at a local school contained roughly twenty times the lead found near a comparable shuttered plant in Vernon, California. Unsafe recycling practices release toxic lead into the environment and create public health risks, especially for children. Environmentally friendly lead recycling methods exist and can prevent widespread contamination. United Nations Environmental Programme efforts and supply-chain tracing can reduce hazardous lead flows, but limited transparency impedes implementation.

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